Kicking around an idea about scheduling, but not sure what to call it.

[mothergooseof4]

Ds is going into 8th this fall. We are finding that all of those fun things that we have planned through the years are often pushed aside for the sake of getting our curriculum done. Then we burn out and walk away from "school" for a bit. After all of these years, there are science kits sitting on the shelves that have never been used and awesome books that we meant to get to, but we were busy doing our curriculum. He was going to do the Kid Coder programming series this year, but by the time he completed his other subjects, he didn't feel like muddling through the book to understand the program. I needed to sit and help him, at least until he got through the basics, but I was always busy teaching the basics to him or his siblings. It just seems like we can't spread ourselves out between so many subjects and give them the focus that they each need. And, none of my kids LIKE school, so when their lists of assignments are done for the day they are outside.

 

I am working on a plan for the younger kids, but my ds and I were discussing a plan for the coming year and had an idea. (We have several in the works.) We were thinking of covering things like math, Latin, and writing everyday. Then have one or two other subjects that you hit hard until it is done. Like, try to finish that science text in a matter of a few months, working a couple of hours each day, then science is done for the year. Or, do intense history for a couple of months and be done. When he does a lit. study have it be the only reading he is doing at the time so we can get through it in a couple of weeks. No, history or science or anything else. Just math, Latin, some writing, and working on the lit. study. Then, he can spend the rest of the year focusing on studying his interests. In the course of the year, everything would be covered, just in a more summer-college-semester type style.

 

He and I discussed how this seems to be the way most people learn in "real" life, at least I do. When I study a topic of interest or need, I immerse myself into it. I don't read a bit on this topic, then a bit on that. When I need to research a health issue, I submerge myself in books, internet sites, and more on the topic. When I need help teaching one of the kids something, I delve into it. I am not typically studying six or seven different topics at once, maybe two, but otherwise I saturate myself in knowledge until I am done with the topic. This often allows me to become very well educated in the subject matter, more so than if I were spread between so many subjects. When I need a break, I pick up a novel for fun or just take a break from studying anything. He thinks he would like to try this type of scheduling for 8th to see if it works for him before starting high school.

 

Has anyone here done this for high school?

[shadanjem]

I haven't done this, but my son is about the same age, and we are running into the same issues. Thanks for this post! It is nice to know I am not the only one.

Danielle

[Pegasus]

Your plan sounds fine. You could call it a modified block schedule or I've heard colleges call very short intense courses "mini-terms."

 

We haven't done anything like that for high school but when the students were younger, we'd use our summer term to do long stretches of the fun stuff: science experiments and art projects, etc.

[Hoot]

We are toying with the idea of doing something like that for the coming year. DS14 really wants to; I'm just trying to figure out how to make it work with the co-ops we'll be doing. Also, when I was in high school we did exactly that. We had 4 classes everyday instead of 8 but each class was 90 min. long instead of 45 and was only 1/2 year long. I loved it.

[TechWife]

I think it will work. Here the ps does block scheduling, which is similar. They take fewer subjects at a time, spend more time per day on them. This means that a one year course is completed in one semester. This is how some of the students are barreling through so many AP courses. They can also take more than one math in any given year.

[jenamiles]

It just so happens that we considering the same thing here. My dd15 really wants to get her community college pre-reqs done as quickly as she can and this is one of the only ways I can see her doing it. We are a family of "one big thing" thinkers. If we have one thing to focus/obsess on, we can knock it out quickly, completely, and competently. Give us 5 subjects to drag out and do a bit of each day, it kills us. We get bored and make it for two - three weeks before it's pulling teeth. I was thinking of doing 1-2 weeks of intense focus on a subject and rotating so that they don't forget what they are learning in other things but at the same time can focus and get a bunch done. I am still not entirely sure what we'd do every day and what we'd rotate. I would be curious to see how it works out for you.

[Kathie in VA]

This year we shifted to one subject for about 4 hours. Then it was done for the week. We had co-op on Friday and one dc had math online classes on Tuesdays. So basically we had TOG-history/geography & Lit/vocab, Writing/Grammar, one dc had latin, both had math, one dc had extra math, both had programming 1st semester only. So they had about 4 to 5 subjects each. The plan was to be done by Wed. at lunch. This would leave some time to check over work or study. Didn't always happen but it was a great target!

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

I think it depends on the learning style of the student. Some kids could hit the books hard and finish a year's worth in a couple months. But what happens if you do science from Sept-Nov and then not again until the following Sept...will there be any retention of the material over a long period of time? So kids would retain the info with no problems-others need the regular repetition or the gradual accumulation of knowledge over time. I'd want to be sure which type my student was before committing to that type of schedule.

[CyndiLJ]

We have already done this the past couple of years, and as we enter high school I see it working even better for us. We do math every day, and English as well. We do block learning for science and history. We will be doing science for the summer, and will try and blow out all of biology and labs. Then spend fall and winter on Early American History. We did it fully last year, and it worked SO well for us, that I think we will do mainly that for all of high school. It allows for focused, not diluted, concentration on a subject. Retention has been higher, in our case, and we spend less time in review as being immersed seems to help.

[Katy]

I know there are a couple of colleges that work on a similar system - an entire course in 3-6 weeks or something. Cornell College in Mt Vernon, IA is one of them. I don't recall all the details from 15 years ago when a friend went there. You could look at their website for ideas on how to implement it. I think it's something like lectures in the morning, labs in early afternoon, extracurricular in late afternoon.

[mysticmomma]

We do minimesters, but our state requires we do all subjects all the time. So I make up a lesson plan that looks like we do that, and by the time review time is upon us it all pretty much matches up but I have to alter the dates.