Penguin Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 N.B. I already know that papers need to be as long as they need to be in order to say what needs to be said. How long is a short paper? A brief essay? My estimate is 500 words, give or take a bit. Here are some of the curricula I have been looking through. Oak Meadow (social studies samples) The student chooses a weekly assignment. Some wording: "In a short essay, discuss the meaning of..." "Present your findings in a brief report." WTM (3rd edition / Great Books section) Write a one-page summary. The finished composition should be at least two pages. Should I presume double spacing? Times New Roman 12 pt = about 250 words per page. post edited for clarity Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luckymama Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 The OM guidelines would make me crazy. State word count or page count with a range, please, for an assignment. Dd has been using MLA for several years which requires double spacing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Part two of the question: If you have used outside providers for history and/or literature, how much guidance are the students given for word count? What would be a typical workload? Let's assume Honors, non-AP level. I want to write my own courses, and am trying to get a feel for appropriate workload for Honors 9th grade. I want to be reasonable but not soft :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa B Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 I would consider a high school level short paper to be 1-2 pages typed. We use Kolbe, and they expect a 1-2 page (typed and double spaced) paper each week for an honors student. I think it is two papers per semester for a regular student. In any online classes my kids have taken at the high school level or any dual enrollment classes, the teachers have provided a word count or word range for each paper. The word count gets longer throughout the year, generally starting at around 500 words and working up to a final paper of around 2000-2500 words for honors high school classes and starting at around 500 and finishing up around 3500-5000 for college level history and literature classes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 I would consider a high school level short paper to be 1-2 pages typed. We use Kolbe, and they expect a 1-2 page (typed and double spaced) paper each week for an honors student. I think it is two papers per semester for a regular student. In any online classes my kids have taken at the high school level or any dual enrollment classes, the teachers have provided a word count or word range for each paper. The word count gets longer throughout the year, generally starting at around 500 words and working up to a final paper of around 2000-2500 words for honors high school classes and starting at around 500 and finishing up around 3500-5000 for college level history and literature classes. Melissa B, Thank you - that was super helpful. Wow, that is a big difference between honors and regular - a bigger difference than I expected. We are with Kolbe this year, but I have not seen their high school course plans. When you say that Kolbe would expect a 1-2 page typed paper each week for honors, I presume that the student would have that assignment for both history and literature. Thus, two such papers per week. Do typical weekly papers require synthesizing multiple resources? That adds significantly to the effort, at least in my homeschool (sample size of one). :eek: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EKS Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 I can't stand it when outside providers don't give specific guidance. To me a short paper or essay would be between 300-500 words. But I would ask (or, better yet, have your student ask) the instructor to be more specific. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa B Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Yes, one paper per week for history and one paper per week for literature. The history papers in particular do have the student synthesizing multiple resources. But, the resources have all been provided. Generally, the student has three or so separate readings per week. The weekly paper has the student discussing a key point from all of the sources. It also asks the students to use information from previous weeks. But rarely would the student have to research information beyond what was provided in the lesson. The same is true for literature. The papers discuss different key points and differing viewpoints from different characters, etc. But, generally no research beyond the lessons themselves. I do require my students to include information from additional sources we use such as Teaching Company videos and outside readings as I prefer not to have our history and literature all coming from one perspective. I've also been known to change the weekly paper topic to cover something I consider more relevant. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Yes, one paper per week for history and one paper per week for literature. The history papers in particular do have the student synthesizing multiple resources. But, the resources have all been provided. Generally, the student has three or so separate readings per week. The weekly paper has the student discussing a key point from all of the sources. It also asks the students to use information from previous weeks. But rarely would the student have to research information beyond what was provided in the lesson. The same is true for literature. The papers discuss different key points and differing viewpoints from different characters, etc. But, generally no research beyond the lessons themselves. I do require my students to include information from additional sources we use such as Teaching Company videos and outside readings as I prefer not to have our history and literature all coming from one perspective. I've also been known to change the weekly paper topic to cover something I consider more relevant. :) Ah, OK now I understand. The bolded makes all the difference in the world. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nansk Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 The word count gets longer throughout the year, generally starting at around 500 words and working up to a final paper of around 2000-2500 words for honors high school classes... Yes, one paper per week for history and one paper per week for literature. So is that two 500-word papers per week at the start of 9th grade and progressing to two 2000-word papers per week by the end of 9th grade? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cosmos Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 So is that two 500-word papers per week at the start of 9th grade and progressing to two 2000-word papers per week by the end of 9th grade? Holy smokes! I hope not. By the way, I think the rule about 250 words per page is a bunch of bunk. I noticed that my ds' papers were not matching that rule at all, so I did a little research. I grabbed lots of text samples, from all kinds of different sorts of writing and of various quality and plugged them into word documents. I put all of them into proper MLA format (1 inch margins all around, 12 point Times New Roman, MLA heading and title on first page). Here's what I found. One page in MLA format is about 400 words. The first page is about 300 words, because the heading and title take up space at the top. What that means is that a "2-page paper" is really about 700 words (not 500), and a "3-page paper" is over 1000 words! Of course it depends on the writer's particular style, but this was the rough average I found over many writing samples. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted February 19, 2015 Author Share Posted February 19, 2015 Holy smokes! I hope not. By the way, I think the rule about 250 words per page is a bunch of bunk. I noticed that my ds' papers were not matching that rule at all, so I did a little research. I grabbed lots of text samples, from all kinds of different sorts of writing and of various quality and plugged them into word documents. I put all of them into proper MLA format (1 inch margins all around, 12 point Times New Roman, MLA heading and title on first page). Here's what I found. One page in MLA format is about 400 words. The first page is about 300 words, because the heading and title take up space at the top. What that means is that a "2-page paper" is really about 700 words (not 500), and a "3-page paper" is over 1000 words! Of course it depends on the writer's particular style, but this was the rough average I found over many writing samples. Cosmos, you just saved me some work. I was going to go through a similar exercise!! BTW, here is a word count anecdote from my college sophomore son. The assignment (upper level psych course) was to write a literature review. The students were given a maximum allowable word count. Apparently, there was grumbling that the requirements of the assignment would necessitate a higher word count. I will presume that the professor was aiming for concision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miss Mousie Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 Cosmos, you just saved me some work. I was going to go through a similar exercise!! BTW, here is a word count anecdote from my college sophomore son. The assignment (upper level psych course) was to write a literature review. The students were given a maximum allowable word count. Apparently, there was grumbling that the requirements of the assignment would necessitate a higher word count. I will presume that the professor was aiming for concision. I agree about aiming for concision. I think setting a maximum is in part a reaction to the tendency to "pad" a paper with irrelevant ramblings (or at least lots of modifiers) to reach the minimum word count. Glad to know that professors still work toward shaping stronger writers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dmmetler Posted February 19, 2015 Share Posted February 19, 2015 The essays DD has had to write for scholarship competitions (for summer programs and the like) are 500-1000 words. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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