Halcyon Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 I am using Donna Young's excel School Year Calculator and trying to figure out how many "terms" I should say I have in my school. I always think of it as two--before xmas and after new years. However, this makes the second term disproportionately long. I don't think that really matters, as, for the most part, our subjects stay the same through both terms (the only things that might differ are Art Study in first term, switching to Logic in second term). Does anyone have any insight? Why would this matter to me? Or does it not? Perhaps it matters more in high school? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Two terms: Fall and Spring. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Halcyon Posted June 19, 2012 Author Share Posted June 19, 2012 Two terms: Fall and Spring. :-) Okay, so I'm not weird. She has theoption of inputting 6 terms and my head started to spin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunnyDays Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We currently do the same thing as you... two terms, before Christmas and after New Year's. In high school yes, it will probably matter more, for example if you have classes that last only one semester. For now, I don't see it as a big deal. And honestly, for us anyway, the difference isn't enough to worry about at this point. This coming school year, it'll be about four months before, five months after. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nov05mama Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Two terms: Fall and Spring. :-) This. I use HST+ and input 2 terms and 4 quarters, so each term is also split in half. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunnyDays Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Okay, so I'm not weird. She has theoption of inputting 6 terms and my head started to spin. Six terms? Who could keep track of that?!? I'm all about keeping it simple. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elegantlion Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have 3 (12 weeks each) terms. Fall, Winter, and Spring. We take a week long break after every 6 weeks and more at Christmas. I used "terms" because trimesters brings to mind morning sickness. Technically we do have 6 sessions of school. Having school broken down into six segments helps me panic less about tweaking and enables us to reach more short-term goals throughout the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sewingmama Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have 4 terms here :D Each is about 10-13 weeks long. Then 2 weeks holiday. Our summer holidays are only 6 weeks long. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ellie Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Okay, so I'm not weird. She has theoption of inputting 6 terms and my head started to spin. Does she actually use the word "terms"? Because most "schools" will have two terms, or two semesters, each those being divided into two 9-week or three 6-week reporting periods. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GoVanGogh Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Technically we do have 6 sessions of school. Having school broken down into six segments helps me panic less about tweaking and enables us to reach more short-term goals throughout the year. Same here. We have six sessions. We do a fair amount of outside activities and they change by season. I like being able to change out our schedule or tweak our schedule or material without having to redo a larger chunk of time. I also love meeting short-term goals. I set a goal for each session and that is our main focus. I feel more productive this way. Another reason: I have yet to find a curriculum that works out nice and neat into our schedule. Ex: An art program would rarely would go a full school year. This way I can plan in smaller chunks and know up front that we will finish the program in two sessions, or roughly sixty days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Violet Crown Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have three: Spring, Summer, and Fall. We take a longish break in winter, whenthe weather is nice, and work like dogs in the summer, when you can't do much outside. The three terms are an artifact of dh's being an academic. It just makes life easier to follow the university schedule. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
happymomofboys Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 July-June, 2 semesters, 4 quarters. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amy Jo Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 I am doing 6 "planning" terms next year, I want to break the year up and have a more seasonal focus. (Based on the ideas here.) I don't have to report anything but attendance, so it doesn't matter how many I have. Are you talking about Donna Young's paid excel planner by chance? (I keep looking at it, but I only have Open Office.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mommyfaithe Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have 4/ 9 week sessions. I do not call them terms, I call them quarters. We school 9 weeks on, 2 weeks off. That works best for us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mazakaal Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We loosely follow the British school year. There are 3 thirteen week terms with a two week break between each term and a week off in the middle of each term. That gives us 39 weeks of school which leaves lots of extra days that we can take off for field trips, etc. Then we have a shortened summer of around 7 weeks. We've usually finished up some curriculum by the end of June, though. So July is sort of school-lite just finishing up what's needed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kfamily Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We school year round with 3 terms at 12 weeks each and a lighter summer term of 4-6 weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grover Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 4 terms of 10 - 11 weeks each and a 2 week break between each one and a longer break over Christmas / New Year (which is pretty much what schools here do). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mrs.Gregg Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have 4/ 9 week sessions. I do not call them terms, I call them quarters. We school 9 weeks on, 2 weeks off. That works best for us. I plan for 4 with 9 week sessions. We then have a "review week" also known in our house as "catch up" week. Followed by 1-2 weeks off. We school Mid August til Mid June. Mid June- Mid August we school 2 days a week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Laura Corin Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 I always used to do three: up to Christmas, then up to Easter, then after Easter. My year was fairly long: like the UK school year it was 38/40 weeks. Laura Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seshet Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 In elementary, I don't bother with terms. In high school, we do three terms. We don't do the typical 36 week school year, and splitting the year is thirds just works better for the larger number of weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kolamum Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Well I don't normally think in regards to terms, but if I did it would be 4. Which is funny because the local school dist. has been fighting to go to a 4 term year for a while now, & officially goes that way next year. I might just copy their terms if it matches our needs for next year. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Closeacademy Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have Summer, which is generally 6-9 weeks long depending on how days and vacations fall. But takes place in June and July. Fall/Winter--August to December, which is 15-16 weeks long. We take off for Labor day, Thanksgiving week and only do 2-3 weeks in December. Late-winter/Spring--January to April, which 16-17 weeks long, with 1 week off for "spring break." May is our "summer break" month because the weather is perfect and we often go on vacation during that month.:001_smile: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boscopup Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 Last year, it was 6... I forget why. This year, it's 4. Here's how I figured out my terms: 1) Download Donna Young's calendar - the one with the whole year on one page with lines out to the side of each week. 2) Write in any long breaks I KNOW we're doing (vacation, major holidays, etc.). 3) Fill in week numbers in the lines we're not using, possibly adding breaks as needed. 4) Look for a reasonable break time to say, "Yeah, that's a term." :D So this year, after doing the above, I found that we had 3 good major breaking points - our Disney trip in the fall (I'm taking off the week before and the week after for packing/recovery), Christmas, and my birthday. That last one is random, but it happened to be a good time to take a week off. ;) Then I realized I had 4 terms, and that sounded good, so I put those into HST+. Really, it doesn't matter at all. You can do 1 term or 100 terms. It doesn't affect anything I do. I report to my cover school twice a year, regardless of the number of terms I've decided on. I don't have end-of-term exams or anything like that (the only "exams" we do would be end of math book, using the placement tests, and that's not something that lines up with our "terms"). Having more terms doesn't make any more work for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassy Posted June 19, 2012 Share Posted June 19, 2012 We have three terms: beginning of September to Christmas, Christmas to Easter, Easter to third week of July. Each of those terms is divided into two halves of between 5 and 7 weeks, with a with a week's break in between. This is the system our local schools follow, and since DS13 (and soon DS11) attend our local school this is the most convenient for us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tracy Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 I used to do the traditional 4 terms. But I stagger a lot of our studies so that I can't divide the first semester into two very easily. So I started to keep records for only two semesters. I am not so sure that it even matters in high school. Credit is given by semester in high school, even though grades are given quarterly. I think quarterly grades only make sense to foster communication between teachers and parents, and homeschoolers don't have this issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joani Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 I've always done two terms - September to January and February to June. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Five. We stop every two months and assess. It's a break point for me and helps me organize. I like keeping things short. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mystie Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 I do 6 terms: a 6-week term and a 1-2 week break between them. We start going stir-crazy if we keep going longer than 6 weeks. :) A break every 6 weeks helps prevent burnout and February blues. And 6 weeks is a very managable chunk to plan. Every 6 weeks we rotate our composer/continent and memory work content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.