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Tell me about the PA Homeschoolers Economics classes - both macro and micro. How are they formatted? How much time did they take? How much reading and writing? DId your student learn and like the class?

A big concern is how much writing I can throw at my student. He is severely dysgraphic, but improving in the area of writing.

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Tell me about the PA Homeschoolers Economics classes - both macro and micro. How are they formatted? How much time did they take? How much reading and writing? DId your student learn and like the class?

A big concern is how much writing I can throw at my student. He is severely dysgraphic, but improving in the area of writing.

 

Julie, Sailor Dude is off to his one outside class, so I will ask him for more specifics when he gets back.  I do know that content-wise this is his favorite class, but he has always enjoyed following the money. For Microeconomics, he is going to self-study using materials and a plan suggested here on the board, but I think he has a study group with students from the Macro class.

 

As far as the writing goes, the 20th essay is due tomorrow, so that's about one essay a week. The most time consuming aspect for ds is the chapter reading that's due on Wednesday that is followed by numerous short answer responses. When he can, he tries to do that over the weekend, but that happens rarely in reality.

 

Sailor Dude is taking the class with AP Statistics and this has been an excellent combination. 

 

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As far as the writing goes, the 20th essay is due tomorrow, so that's about one essay a week. The most time consuming aspect for ds is the chapter reading that's due on Wednesday that is followed by numerous short answer responses. When he can, he tries to do that over the weekend, but that happens rarely in reality.

 

Sailor Dude is taking the class with AP Statistics and this has been an excellent combination. 

 

 

An essay per week might kill my son, then again he's really stepping up to more writing. The class itself sounds like a lot of fun.

 

When you say essay, I think full paper or five paragraph essay type of essay; I know others use "essay" to mean short paragraph answers. I guess my question is what exactly is the volume of writing?

 

My boy is a math/physics kind of guy, but he loves LEARNING. I know I can't do him justice teaching him economics so I was looking at this as a choice.

 

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An essay per week might kill my son, then again he's really stepping up to more writing. The class itself sounds like a lot of fun.

 

When you say essay, I think full paper or five paragraph essay type of essay; I know others use "essay" to mean short paragraph answers. I guess my question is what exactly is the volume of writing?

 

My boy is a math/physics kind of guy, but he loves LEARNING. I know I can't do him justice teaching him economics so I was looking at this as a choice.

 

 

Good question!  I went and looked at ds's most recent "essays" and many of them look more like short answer prompts with graphs.  I know early on there were essays on "lousy" economists and those were more of the 4-5 paragraph fare.  I would suspect from the "essays" I saw that the Wednesday chapter assignment with sometimes as many as 40 short answer questions, gives Sailor Dude more grief as they usually take him 2-3 hours easily.

 

I know that the games are a favorite of ds's, but that they can be problematic in that you have to make a move by a certain time each day. We are on the west coast and the final mad scramble came during sailing practice.

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Julie, ds said that most of the "free essays" happen before Thanksgiving and the essays they are doing now are really more short answer for the most part. His one complaint is that the routine of the class never changes. That's probably small in the scheme of things and maybe even helpful for some kids.

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Lisa...I'm not Julie, but we are also considering this course. Is your son bored with the routine of the course? I'm a bit concerned about this. 

 

Does it end in Feb? Is that when he plans to study micro?

 

Yes, he has grumbled more than once about the routine of the class, even though the subject is of great interest to him. I think this week is the last week of daily assignments, but they have a couple of things due off and on over the next couple of months and I believe there is a final in April.

 

He liked the material so much that he emailed Dr. Richman about what he should do next year for his senior year. I haven't even looked at that because it upsets my perfectly laid senior year plans and would involve DE at the university for sure. If he majors in economics, I am unclear as to what would happen with those credits.

 

I think if your student has a strong interest in Economics, it's a great class. If a student wasn't interested, I'd pass. It's painful to inflict to Economics on the unmotivated.

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