Would it be weird for a 9th grader to not do science or history?

[journey00]

My 9th grade dd takes from 9am to 2pm (before leaving for soccer, piano, voice lessons, choir) doing WriteGuide, Theology, and Math and next week will start an online Spanish class 1x week. How will she have time to do Science and History? She doesn't have a LD, she's just slow and thorough. It is her God-given temperament and she's always been like this in all aspects of her life and that's fine with me but how will she meet a Science and History credit for 9th grade? Advice, anyone? TIA! :)

[regentrude]

It is a problem if she is college bound, or if you have to follow your state's graduation requirements - I'm pretty sure those will include requirements for science and history. Look at the admission requirements of the kind of colleges she might be interested in.

 

She presumably takes a lunch break, so is doing school for less than five hours a day - that is simply not enough time to cover all high school subjects, even for a student working at regular speed. You need to make more time for school. I can see different ways of doing this:

• starting the school day earlier, say at 8am
• schooling on Saturdays
• schooling year round and covering history and science in a block schedule over the summer.
• dropping one of the extracurriculars - four extracurriculars seems disproportionate in relation to her light academic schedule

 

[elegantlion]

Ds leans toward the lower end of time allotment for high school, but I would not eliminate a core subject especially in 9th grade. Most colleges want to see 4 years of science and at least 3 years of history/social studies. Even if she is not college bound at this time, she could change her mind and then you'd might be scrambling to fulfill those requirements during the junior and senior years when test and college prep take more time (and aren't necessarily awarded credit). 

 

How many credits are you awarding this year. It looks as if you have English (are you doing literature?), Bible, Math, and Spanish (practice for that will take more than 1x a week as well). That's only 4 credits plus extracurriculars. Adding history and science will get you up to the more common 6 per year. 

 

I agree with regentrude's suggestions, you could also block schedule them during the year, doing history this semester and science the next. 

 

For me, the goal was to keep options open during the first year of high school. 

[Mom22ns]

I agree with Regentrude's advice, but I would also consider how she is spending her time. Five hours to do math, WriteGuide which I would only consider part of an English credit and Theology, one elective, just isn't going to work. I would see exactly what is taking exactly how long and why. If math takes 2 hours - fine. However, for the other two, I would set a one hour timer each day and say when the timer goes off - you must move on. She may return to it in the evening after all the running around if she needs to, or carry them with her during all the running around. 

 

She is going to have to learn better time management, she just is. Unless of course, college isn't in her future, then all of that becomes less critical.

 

 

[sandalwood]

I would give up an extra subject before I gave up a core subject.  I would do all the core subjects first, then the extra ones. Not sure about what state you are in, but those are basic classes needed to graduate.  If you don't do them now, you sure don't want to squeeze a bunch of classes in your last two years  just to graduate? You don't want her carrying the load of two sciences with labs her last two years or anything! 

 

Sometimes we have to play "good cop, bad cop" as mothers.    Tell her this is high school and she just has to start earlier and start her on a time schedule.  Even if college is not in the plans, some type of job is.    She has to learn time management.   At the high school level, school is generally just long when you squeeze all the subjects in.   Even if she was in public school and got home at 3:30 or 4, she'd have homework for 2-3 hours.

 

 I say mainly start earlier, and do more in those hours.  I'm assuming in that 9-2 she is also eating lunch sometime.     Give her daily on paper a print out of  her schedule & classes & what you expect.  Give her accountabilty for getting it all done.  So, show her what she needs to accomplish in those classes each day (on paper) to be able to do the extras.   Just like in a job--- you are expected to turn in projects, etc. on time.  

Don't want this to sound harsh, I promise.  That's just what I would do.

[Gwen in VA]

You have a lot of great suggestions already. I just want to add one --

 

Can the two of you draw up a general plan of what you want her high school years to look like? Set the core first  -- 4 years of English, 4 years of math, 3 years of science + labs, 3 years of history, etc. Then add in the fun stuff -- home ec or economics or drawing or whatever electives would help her and bring her joy.

 

If you have a roadmap of what she needs to study when, it might be easier to see why she has to really put her nose to the grindstone NOW!

 

 

[journey00]

She's definitely college bound to either our local community college or a small private liberal arts university which require 4 English, 3 Math, 3 History, 1 foreign language, 2 Science and one should be a lab. She is vocally talented and very much sees music (sacred music and harmonizing not aspiring to be a pop star) in her future career hence the piano, cantoring, voice lessons, choir with performance so those are not an option to drop. She has a student planner and has been writing down what she's been doing and how much time she spends on each subject. I started to write out the 4 year plan and I didn't finish it but I'm going to finish it with her by my side and mKe sure we are meeting all graduation requirements for my state of Oklahoma. I am very much interested in the block schedule and that would have been a better topic title but I got zero responses on my last post. Basically, she needs to start earlier, set a timer to help her manage her time, and be prepared to work after she gets home from her electives which are still important.

 

9th grade plan:

English: WriteGuide, Movies As Literature, Essentials in Writing, Romeo and Juliet with study guide.

Math: Algebra

FL: Spanish live online class, 1x week. I'm a fluent speaker and I will converse daily with her.

History: Early American History.

Science: still undecided but need something not super rigorous but get it done. Any suggestions? :)

 

Thank you everyone for your great advice.

[Penguin]

I will comment that our private school in NC does not have 9th graders take history. Ninth graders have seven credits, but history is not one of them.

 

They start history in 10th grade. This school is AP-laden, and the graduates routinely go on to top schools.

 

I am NOT saying that I LIKE this arrangement...I don't. Just pointing out a possibility.

[lmrich]

I think she needs more as well. She needs either science or history or both. Have you thought about doing some classes in one semester?  I would stretch Foregin Language, English (it looks like she needs to read more) and Algebra through the year, but would consider doing all of a history credit in one semester. You would double up the assisngments etc.. but then it is easier for her focus on one subject. Just keep in mind, she has to complete the full year's worth of curriclum in one semester, or it does not count. The other option to consider is using summer to get work done. I know music takes a lot of time; she just might have to work year -round. 

[kiana]

I think you could block history into Saturday sessions, which would both give her more time to explore and free up time during the week. If you did science in the summer and history on Saturdays, you'd get it in without significantly altering what you're doing.