VP Omnibus Primary & Secondary

[Karis]

Do students take Primary and Secondary concurrently or Primary during the school year and Secondary over the summer?

 

How accelerated are the summer (Secondary) courses?

 

Can someone advise either way?

 

What would you do? (What have you done?)

 

:bigear:

[G5052]

I assume that you're talking about the online courses.

 

In general, students take both Primary and Secondary together, but not everyone does it that way because of developmental issues, other activities, etc. etc.

 

The summer courses step up the reading schedule and have fewer papers.

[Suzannah]

If you are not talking about the online classes, here's what we do. I choose the Omnibus books we will study based on WTM recommendations, whether we have already covered the book in-depth within the last year or two and my own level of interest in having my kids read it. We usually end up with a selection of books which is equivalent to a full year of Omnibus, but sometimes I pull one or two in that are not covered or are from a different Omnibus volume. And sometimes I drop a few here and there. I believe this is in keeping with the spirit of Great Books studies and is acknowledged by both WTM and Omnibus to be acceptable.

 

We do both Primary and Secondary books, and while I do often schedule books concurrently, I try to be mindful of how long or difficult the books are so that DS isn't expected to read two very challenging works at the same time. Sometimes I will encourage DS to read one of the Secondary books quickly over a weekend to get them "out of the way" and allow more time for focus on the Primary books.

[Karis]

Thanks so much

 

(was talking about the on-line classes)

[My3Boys]

My ds did 2 years of Scholars for Omnibus III and IV. He tells me he would have preferred to do them separately even though they are probably designed to work together. He did take them together, however, and did just fine.

 

He is now a senior at a classical Christian school and has taken/is taking Omnibus V and VI primary and secondary together and has still done just fine.

 

If you are doing their diploma program, assuming things have not changed in the past few years, I believe the student gets more credit if they do both of them concurrently.

 

ETA: We have never done the summer program so I can't speak to how accelerated it is.

Edited April 3, 2012 by My3Boys

[G5052]

Thanks so much

 

(was talking about the on-line classes)

 

Either look through the books or email the teacher to find out which books are the harder ones, and have your student pre-read those.

 

I've done this for the last few years with the local program we've been in, and it helps sooo much. My 9th grader really complained about reading To Kill a Mockingbird over the summer, but he's rereading it now for a class assignment, and he'll be much better prepared for the essay assignment than a student who is reading it for the first time.