Do you schedule your HSers school work?

[Tohru]

Just curious. If you pick out the curricula for your high school student, do you also schedule the assignments out by day/week or do you ask them to schedule it themselves, do the work at their own pace and bring it to you when they are done?

 

Please tell me grade level too. Thanks!

 

 

 

ETA: Original wording sounded snotty. I'm trying to figure out if one way or the other would be better for some things. We have several self-teaching programs we're doing this year and I don't know if scheduling it all out would work better or if expecting ds to go at his own pace and check in would be better. Thanks :)

Edited July 14, 2012 by jadedone80

[Jenny in Florida]

Just curious. If you pick out the curricula for your high school student, do you also schedule the assignments out by day/week or do you ask them to schedule it themselves, do the work at their own pace and bring it to you when they are done?

 

Please tell me grade level too. Thanks!

 

My son is going into 10th in the fall. I write weekly goals for him. Until this past year, we've gone over the weekly assignments each Monday and worked out the plan for each day together. However, he's asked to take over doing that part himself next year.

 

I used the same approach with my daughter.

[southcarolinamom]

I write out weekly lesson plans for every subject, and hand the book to my child. She does the work and checks it off, and then shows me her work so I can grade it.

 

I told her as long as she has every subject done by the week's end, I don't care how she schedules the work. (i.e. some weeks she likes to do "all of the week's history" in one day, "all of a week's science" another day, etc. - then other weeks she will complete just one lesson in each subject per day.

[Calm37]

I schedule assignments on Home School Tracker. My girls get a check list for the week first thing each Monday. This seems to keep us on track. They will both be in 10th this year.

[JanetC]

I am incapable of scheduling down to the day during my summer planning period, but I do break it into rough chunks of what I think should take a week to do. As we go through the school year, I break the chunks down by the day as I go. However, now that DD is entering 9th, I want her to help break down her daily schedules as well.

 

--Janet

[AngieW in Texas]

I started off writing down assignments for each day, but with the understanding that they could skip one thing for the day if they worked ahead in another and that nothing could be skipped two scheduled days in a row.

 

I got to the point of just writing down the pieces that were due for the week (broken down into chunks) and let them figure out how they wanted to actually schedule it themselves.

 

In 12th grade, my girls have mostly been doing cc classes, so I haven't had as much to do. For next year I will just be writing down assignments for English and Thinkwell Calculus. Everything else will be classes at the cc.

 

When we were using Kinetic Books, the daily math assignment was to work for 45 minutes to 1 hour. I didn't actually break it down any more than that. We had to switch programs when my dd finished Algebra II because that's as high as Kinetic Books goes right now.

[Lizzie in Ma]

I write out a term at a time, (9weeks) scheduling everything by the week.

Always have, works out best that way.

Have now sat with oldest (going into 11th) and had her do it herself so she gets a feel for it for college.

[1Togo]

We are headed into 10th grade, and since the middle of 9th grade, we have worked together to plan a week at a time on Friday afternoon. We use a homemade Excel spreadsheet; i.e. days of the week in a column on the left and subjects at the top of columns going across the page. We keep the spreadsheet on a clipboard. Dd checks off the work as she completes it. On Saturday afternoon, she copies everything she has completed into a generic planner from Office Depot. The planner has monthly calendars, which she uses to record extracurriculars and volunteer work. After dd understands the flow of a course, she is able to schedule the work on her own. At least two of her courses next year will have a syllabus, so she can get experience with that. Also, during the second semester of 10th grade, I want her to plan a project or elective with minimal input from me.

Edited July 14, 2012 by 1Togo

[Gwen in VA]

I put together a weekly schedule. Within that, the kids schedule their own work.

 

We try to touch base on a daily basis for math -- if I don't grade an assignment and a kid is not aware how lost he is, the next assignments get ugly in a hurry!

[MicheleinMN]

My dd started scheduling her own work by 9th grade, but my sons have both asked that I schedule their work for them. I tried doing weekly assignments, but they both didn't/couldn't get their work done in a timely manner. They both would underestimate the amount of time necessary, and they also would put off the harder assignments until late in the week, and then I got either shoddy or incomplete work. I have an 11th grade son this fall, and I am HOPING to at least transition back to weekly assignments, but I'm still not sure that he's ready. (In contrast, his younger brother will probably be able to schedule most of his own work this year for 8th grade.)

 

HTH

[laughing lioness]

Ds and I go over what he "needs" to get done and what he "wants" to get done (based on a typical course of study, dh's, ds's and my goals for him by the year to decide what classes/extra's to do- he is integral to the plan. He tends to load himself down and take on too much and then get overwhelmed- he still needs some outside perspective about how much time things take- kwim?

 

On Sundays we have a family planning mtg- 4 adults in the house, 2 cars, 4 drivers, 3 1/2 workers, etc, plus the youngers sched. That's the matrix for the week- who has what car, picks up who when and meets who where.

On Monday a.m. ds and I sit down with a weekly plan sheet and go over what needs done school wise and when (he has Tutoring Cntr on Tu- hmwrk due- and math tutoring- hmwk due) and a job and staffing at Challenge, p.t., and "stuff" and he has a huge writing project he is really motivated about (he'd love to spend 5 hrs or more a day on it).

[angela in ohio]

I run most of our high school courses like college classes: I give them a syllabus with weekly amounts of work, we meet for class/discussion/teaching 1-3 times per week, and they have both short- and long-term deadlines to meet.

 

Their actual daily schedule, other than times we are meeting, is up to them. I taught them to manage their time and meet deadlines in junior high so that they would be prepared for this.

[PeterPan]

After hearing SWB's story about getting so far behind in a correspondence course her mother *thought* she was doing each day, hehe, I was struck by the importance of adequate supervision. How much is adequate depends on the kid. With things like that where there's already a structure, I tend to have a list of the lessons and just have mental checklists of where we need to be at target points (Christmas, Easter, etc.). Then you give them butt in the seat time to do it. But if you do that you still have to check and make sure it's actually getting done, haha. Ask me how I know. :lol:

 

So yes, different levels of structure for different things. SWB has a talk on planning and how to teach that independent process. You can probably get it through PHP.

[elegantlion]

For the upcoming year I've scheduled weekly lessons. I broke them down into days for my own sanity, as I tend to overschedule and we're not doing everything every day. That's how we've done it in the past and it worked well.

 

I only print the schedule a week or two at a time, to tweak or make room for tangents.

 

I have a schedule for each class, lesson 1, lesson 2, etc. Then I merge into a master list for the week. So it's easy to be on lesson 12 in one subject, lesson 15 in another. We need the flexiblity.

[Joani]

My oldest is going into 9th, and I'm planning to give him his assignments for four weeks at a time. I think that will let him do things the way he likes - in big chunks, but still not let him get too far behind in any subject. I'm not sure exactly how his online course will go, but I'll help him schedule his work for that.

[Tullia]

My experience with home schooled high school students is that most need regular supervision. There may be a few who do not, but they're the exception. You should not have to look over a high school student's shoulder every minute, but having regular sessions to answer questions, discuss what's been accomplished, what's not going well, and for giving feedback on exams or writing assignments is a good idea.

 

My son wasn't always super happy or co-operative during conference time, but he admits now that he needed the accountability. A student who has a hard time with time management or organizational skills may need a daily conference; many do well with once or twice a week.

[jibaker103]

I run most of our high school courses like college classes: I give them a syllabus with weekly amounts of work, we meet for class/discussion/teaching 1-3 times per week, and they have both short- and long-term deadlines to meet.

 

Their actual daily schedule, other than times we are meeting, is up to them.

 

This is my goal for 8th and 11th grade boys for this year with daily check in for the 8th grader. I plan to have an introduction meeting on Sunday mornings after breakfast to discuss the topic of the upcoming week, expectations, assignments, and use planners to plot daily work. Also a review meeting on Friday afternoons after lunch for going over completed assignments and if any work needs to be redone. This way they have time to makeup any work without it interfering with the new week and have some time to work ahead if they choose to do so.

[whiskeywife]

Mine is starting 9th grade this year and I plan to continue to do what I did for his 8th grade year. I wrote down all his assignments for the week and he could decide how and when to get it done. My only requirement was that he did a math lesson each day and not try to get the whole week's worth of math done in one day. He did try that and ended up getting frustrated (so would I if I had to do 5 straight hours of math) so he has to do one each day.

[PeterPan]

My experience with home schooled high school students is that most need regular supervision.

 

Sigh, thanks for the word of warning! Although in my heart I know that's true in our case, sometimes my weary side wants to buy into blissful fantasies of what works for opk (other people's kids). Gotta be diligent, gotta be diligent.

[TheApprentice]

Ds will be in 9th grade and this year, I've put together a syllabus for each course, but it's broken down into weeks. I'm allowing him to manage his time on how and when he gets the assignment done. So for example, in World Geography: he has certain text pages to read, notes to take in his notebook, questions to answer, projects to complete and tests to take, each week. He can divide his time any way he chooses just as long as all the assignments for that week are complete. So basically, we'll have Monday morning meetings. The only course where there will be some communication more than once a week will be Literature.

 

We'll see how this works. For the last 3 years, I've written daily assignments.

[Mom22ns]

I give a weekly schedule that is broken into days. Some subjects my kids do with me and others are done more independently. For independent subjects we meet weekly to make sure they are on track. They don't have to follow my daily break downs as long as everything is done by our weekly meetings. The things we do together, obviously I know if we get through what I planned each day or not and adapt accordingly.

[TechWife]

Yes, I do. My rising 10th grader has a severe case of ADHD. At this point in his development, he wouldn't know where to start if he had to do it on his own.

[Brenda in MA]

My dd started scheduling her own work by 9th grade, but my sons have both asked that I schedule their work for them. I tried doing weekly assignments, but they both didn't/couldn't get their work done in a timely manner. They both would underestimate the amount of time necessary, and they also would put off the harder assignments until late in the week, and then I got either shoddy or incomplete work. I have an 11th grade son this fall, and I am HOPING to at least transition back to weekly assignments, but I'm still not sure that he's ready. (In contrast, his younger brother will probably be able to schedule most of his own work this year for 8th grade.)

 

HTH

 

This describes my experience, too. With my oldest by the start of 9th grade, I was able to make a weekly list of tasks, and he scheduled his daily work for the upcoming week on Sunday nights. I did check his math daily and have discussions a couple of times a week with him about the literature & history readings. By his senior year, he was going to the CC part time and scheduling all of his work himself. I did check in with him several times a week just to ask him what the assignments were and to check if he was on top of things. He did very well making/following a plan. He has also done well in college organizing his schoolwork schedule.

 

My next one has just not been ready for this level of self-planning so soon. He'll be going into 11th grade this fall, and I'm hoping to try having him schedule his days if I give him a weekly list. His work is a little more complicated, too, because he has more outside classes, so the assignments may not all be ready for him on Sunday night (depending on what the on-line teachers do). My goal is to get him to almost total self-planning by senior year. I hope it works out.

 

Best wishes,

Brenda

[PeterPan]

Yes, I do. My rising 10th grader has a severe case of ADHD. At this point in his development, he wouldn't know where to start if he had to do it on his own.

 

Mine would. She'd pick out one thing she really liked from the list, do half of it, then get distracted researching some really great hair-brained project and be all enthusiastic about it when I check on her at the end of the day. Which just goes to show why I don't check her at the end of the day. :D One day recently I came in to find her scaling down the Statue of Liberty to 120th scale so she could start making a model of it, all when she was supposedly doing her history. Glad the math is going so well now, but what happened to the history lesson assignment? :lol:

 

PS. We paused the history to finish the scaling. Gotta live in the moment sometimes and just go with it. :)

Edited July 15, 2012 by OhElizabeth

[lllll]

.

Edited July 18, 2012 by ksva

[TechWife]

Gotta live in the moment sometimes and just go with it. :)

 

I need you to keep reminding me of this!

[bobbeym]

I did daily assignments for DS14 in 8th grade last year, but even then he'd be weeks behind in some things because he didn't want to do it and I was too busy to keep up with his work (even though that's Dad's job).

 

This year I penciled in weekly assignments with notations of the quizzes, labs, and tests, and will sit down on Sunday nights with him to help him map out what he thinks he can get done each day.

 

DH thinks he should have a strict schedule (i.e., 8-830 Bible, 8:30-9:30 science, etc.) but DS has ADD and I know from personal experience that our brains don't always work best that way. He just needs to find the right combination of flexibility and self-responsiblity for meeting his goals.

[Candid]

Five years ago when we started Tapestry of Grace, my oldest was in fifth grade. I provided him a schedule that had 3 components, a place to note his reading for the week, a place to note work to be turned in, and a weekly schedule. For the first year we mostly worked through that weekly schedule together. By the end of the year he was mostly handling that on his own with some input from me. By the next year, he was totally on his own.

 

His younger brother is not quite as able to do this as his brother was. He was in sixth grade this past year, he need a visual chart to remind him what daily work to do, but he was able to handle getting his reading done on his own this year. I am going to work with him a bit more this year to help him get more out of the schedule sheet in terms of planning.

 

That said, what do I do with out work? Some work is already nicely broken into weekly chunks, Tapestry for instance, some work like my youngest's spelling, needs to be done with me daily. Over the summer I spend time with each program and figure out how many discrete chunks (lessons, problem sets, etc) a program has and how it would be wise, in general, to break it out. Then I make a note of that and eventually write out an overall schedule for each boy that tells them: do math daily, do logic 3 times a week, etc.

 

Thanks to Tapestry I have a natural moment each week at our discussion time to both assign next week's work and ask for progress each week in other materials.

[love2read]

Syllabus broken down by Subject, quarter (to be completed by) and week (no days listed, just boxes or circles to be checked) like this:

 

Biology

Quarter 1 (Must be completed by November 12)

 

Week 1

O Read textbook pgs 13-20

O Watch "bozemanscience plant structure video"

O Answer section questions p 21

O Pick research topic from those listed p 22 and begin research

 

and so on. dc are expected to transfer those into his planner and if he chooses to do all of them in two days and spend the remaining week on the other subjects I let him. Some of my children would do each subject every day, but most of them would do blocks of work, focusing on just a few subjects each day or even alternating subjects by week. The Week is just a place holder, so they may be on Week 3 in science while they are doing Week 6 in history. Whatever.

 

They fill in their planner Sunday night and I check it with the syllabus. This is also a reminder to me to collect any finished work from the previous week. Normally I grade their math daily and collect other work to grade or discuss on Wed and Fri. They are expected to bring me their history, literature and logic to discuss daily, but if they forget (and this happens often) I remember on Wed and Fri.

 

Start with a plan that you and your child can live with and make adjustments from there, but have something set in stone by the end of October because consistency is so important and there isn't fudge-time in high school like their is in the lower grades.

[beckster]

I put together a weekly schedule. Within that, the kids schedule their own work.

 

We try to touch base on a daily basis for math -- if I don't grade an assignment and a kid is not aware how lost he is, the next assignments get ugly in a hurry!

 

:iagree: This is exactly what we do. Our daughter is going into 10th. This is the way we have scheduled since she came out of the ps system in 7th grade. Our son is going into 7th grade this year. I have been planning daily for him. That will start to transition to weekly this year. So true about math. Can't be lazy there!

[Tammyla]

I put together a daily/weekly check list. I try to get the grading done Friday and have the schedule ready to for Monday.

 

I do have the year and semesters planned out, but often tweak here and there.

 

My oldest needs very little motivation from me and her work is graded on Friday. However, ds needs a drill SSgt that keeps on top of his lessons every single day. I check his stuff as he moves from one subject to the next.

[Nscribe]

Dd will be in 9th grade next year. Due to the very incremental nature of the programs we chose for the year, I planned the expectations on a daily basis. We bought her a planner and each week we will fill in objectives broken down daily. It would just be far too easy to have the time slip away and have to scramble.

 

In order to edge her toward more independence, she will have a scattering of bigger projects to self plan. I hope with 10th grade to see her take a weekly list and self subdivide it. Finally by 11/12th be largely self planning.