Simplified Science Fusion Schedule

[Murrayshire]

I have modules H, I, & J for my rising 8th grader.  I know I could just print out the pacing guide to hand off to my dd but I was hoping to plug everything in for her so she isn't navigating all over the place.  She likes the idea of writing in the worktext and she likes the digital.  So we will most likely do both & add virtual/hands on labs as needed.  I would like for her lesson to be as simplified and efficient as possible.  There is so much information that I realize it would be almost impossible to do everything on a 3 day science schedule.  So to save some trial & error for us, has anyone found a simplified way of planning each lesson.  For example, Day 1:  Lesson 1, Read; Day 2: Lab; Day 3: Lesson Review & documentary........Thanks in advance!

[Murrayshire]

Plum Crazy-- I was crossing my fingers that you would reply!  Thank you for your help....when I get a longer free moment to go over what you have said, I'll reply back!! 

[Murrayshire]

I think the key to scheduling ScienceFusion is to continue to assess what she is enjoying and what your priorities are. They provide so many different avenues to learn that it can be easy to overschedule. Considering there are 16 lessons in Module H and 14 in Module I that does not include the unit reviews and tests, it can be easy to run behind. You really can't do a lesson a week, it has to be more. Luckily, not all weeks have a virtual lab, so you can make up some time there.

 

Ideally, I would do a 4 or 5 day week and just make sure you do more than a lesson a week. Most of the digital lessons aren't that long (15 minutes-45 minutes), but the worktext can take a good chunk of time. The digital lesson and the worktext cover the same topics, so I wouldn't feel bad about dropping a bit of it. If I were doing both, I would use the digital lesson to introduce the topic, then use the worktext for review. You could always drop or select a few pages from the worktext to do instead of the whole lesson. I schedule in the Worktext by just linking the electronic edition in Thinkcentral and entering the page numbers in the text portion.

 

I schedule everything into Thinkcentral so he just has one list to work off of. 

The bare minimum schedule I would follow if I were to keep a 3 day schedule is:

 

Day 1 - Digital Lesson 

Day 2 - Lab  - not all weeks have one so you save a day here and there

Day 3 - Review (Worktext) and Quiz

and repeat until Unit Test

 

If you were able to make it a 4 day science week, I would schedule it

Day 1 - Digital Lesson

Day 2 - Lab -  not all weeks have one so you save a day here and there

Day 3 - Review (Worktext) and Quiz

Day 4 - Digital Lesson

 

A 5 day week gives you some breathing room and shortens the science day. 

Day 1 - Digital Lesson

Day 2 - Virtual Lab - again not all weeks have one so you save a day here and there

Day 3 - Review (Worktext) 

Day 4 - Quiz

Day 5 - Digital Lesson

 

It seemed like Module H went much faster for us than G. I would look at ALL of the modules and count out how many days you need to spend on each one so you don't go over the school year like I did.  :blush: He's still working on Module I. I ended up just going the digital route so he could finish before the license expires. It's much faster and still covers all the concepts, but is missing depth. I saved all of the paper labs so we could do some along the way and after for fun. 

 

HTH!

 

Okay Plum Crazy.....I want to thank you again for your details on scheduling!  I have scheduled 4 lessons so far and I think I have it figured out.  It is a tedious task though!  I hope it is worth it plugging everything in!  I may just do one unit right now until we get started in it to see how dd likes it.  She may want to do more hands on labs instead of virtual labs or vice versa.  I may have to pick your brain again if I run into any problems!  I hope you don't mind!

Thanks,

Jana