Poll: Skills vs. Content

[Janice in NJ]

Going to try to post a poll here....

...let's see if I can do it. :001_smile:

 

Janice

 

Enjoy your little people

Enjoy your journey

 

Sheesh....

more detailed info copied from post below.... :001_smile:

As always - rushing produces confusion. :-)

 

My question.... the "poll" form doesn't allow the # of characters that I WANTED to use:

 

If you could do grades K-8 OVER again in order to better PREPARE your student for high school, would you shift your focus in grades K-8?

 

Choice #1: Given a do-over opportunity I would spend MORE time on skills (reading skills, writing skills, and arithmetic) and LESS time on content (history, science, languages, the arts, literature) DURING grades K-8?

 

Choice #2: Given a do-over opportunity I would spend LESS time on skills (reading skills, writing skills, and arithmetic) and MORE time on content (history, science, languages, the arts, literature) DURING grades K-8?

 

Choice #3: We rocked in grades K-8. We entered high school with a wide range of skills and a strong knowledge base in the content areas.

 

Make more sense?

[Michelle in MO]

What an interesting question!

 

I voted to spend more time on content and less on skills, at least at the h.s. level, although I'd have to qualify that statement somewhat. When my kids were little, skills were all-important and all-consuming; teaching them the essentials of reading, writing, arithmetic, spelling, etc., took up most or all of our time.

 

In the high school years, I would say that content tended to take over the bulk of the curriculum, at least for our family, except for a few subject areas: math was definitely one of those areas where skills were critical (although I think it could be argued that math is also a content area); Latin; grammar. Writing seems to be a mix of both skill and content. History and science (to some degree) seem to be more content areas--except for balancing equations in chemistry!

 

This is a great question; I hope others join in!

[8filltheheart]

Janice,

 

I'm not sure I understand your question??

 

Are you asking whether or not I would have only focused on the 3 Rs at the expense of science, history, and foreign language? If that is the case, I'm definitely a no b/c I think high schoolers should be beyond the 3R focus......not to mention I don't know how you could graduate based on any typical high school grad requirements.

 

If you are asking if I would focus more on the analytical vs content-based knowledge (like the whys behind historical occurences vs the names, dates, and locations)......that is where we live in high school. My kids are pretty pathetic at names and dates, but the big picture they grasp. I should require more of the knowledge base; the problem is that I have little value for it since with technology we can get those sort of answers in seconds.

[Janice in NJ]

As always - rushing produces confusion. :-)

 

My question.... the "poll" form doesn't allow the # of characters that I WANTED to use:

 

If you could do grades K-8 OVER again in order to better PREPARE your student for high school, would you shift your focus in grades K-8?

 

Choice #1: Given a do-over opportunity I would spend MORE time on skills (reading skills, writing skills, and arithmetic) and LESS time on content (history, science, languages, the arts, literature) DURING grades K-8?

 

Choice #2: Given a do-over opportunity I would spend LESS time on skills (reading skills, writing skills, and arithmetic) and MORE time on content (history, science, languages, the arts, literature) DURING grades K-8?

 

Choice #3: We rocked in grades K-8. We entered high school with a wide range of skills and a strong knowledge base in the content areas.

 

Make more sense? :001_smile:

[MicheleinMN]

I voted #1, but I think I'm really closer to #3. My high school students are doing well. I wouldn't change the time spent reading literature to them when they were younger, but I don't think I would stress over history and science like I did back then. As a matter of fact, I KNOW I don't stress over it like I did when they were young....my younger children are spending more time in skill areas than my older ones did, but we still read a lot of literature.

 

Michele

[Sharon in MD]

The only area where I feel like I really should have/could have done a better job is in reading. My ds is not a reader by nature. He HAS improved significantly in the last year, but I think this will be one area he will struggle with as he goes off to college next year.

 

He managed to pull a 630 on the CR part of the SAT in June, which frankly thrilled us....he had only scored a 500 and 490 on the two PSATs he took. He did put in a pretty good amount of practice for it from Jan through May of last year. I don't think I pushed hard enough on reading when he was younger. I should have probably included more specific reading assignments in literature.

 

In hind sight, here is what I would change:

 

I would require summer reading lists probably starting in Jr High, a mix of fiction and non-fiction

 

I would specifically work on some critical reading programs, maybe just use an SAT course, but I'd start it sooner than we did.

 

I would require more "pleasure" reading during the school year.

 

I think I'd do more shared reading in elementary school and less mom just reads it aloud....I'd challenge him to read better by reading with him rather than just to him.

 

Other than that, I've been pretty happy with the way we've done things. I think he is in pretty good shape to go off to college and succeed.

[8filltheheart]

Since I have gotten to do things over and over again for K-8, I voted do things the same b/c I think I have finally figured it out. ;) High school still requires some tweaking. By the time my youngest dd gets there, I will hopely have 0 "guinea-pigging" going on.

[bettyandbob]

I have no regrets, but my oldest really did well in the academic lottery. He didn't do so well in athletics or social skills. So, I didn't have to spend much energy on helping him grasp major academic skills--he's is really blessed and so was I to have him.

 

That said, I am a teacher (very part time) and I've worked a lot with kids who were typically developing and who had special needs. If you don't have certain skills getting the content is difficult--in the format it is usually taught at the high school level. So, if a child is having trouble grasping basic skills in reading, writing and math, more time should be spent on these skills than content. Gaps in content in science, history and literature can be lightly filled in with books on tape in car trips around town and on long trips. History and science content can also be supplemented with video. A student can watch or listen without being expected to do a specific assignment. No they won't retain everything in the content of the audio or video without an assignment, but it will help fill in the gaps. Additionally, the audio or video can be used as a precursor developing a writing assignment (skill) or comprehension.

 

If reading, writing, and math are not up to par, some high school level subjects may have to be heavily adapted. Finally, not knowing about the French Revolution is a shame, but not having decent reading, writing, and math skills will prevent a person from getting a job or rising in his career field.

[Jane in NC]

In between weather updates (Tropical Storm Hanna is coming to call), I have been mulling this one over. Note that my now 11th grade son attended a Montessori school through 6th grade.

 

I am content with my son's mathematics, science and history background. While he is an avid reader and is probably as well read or more well read than his peers, it always seems as though there are too many authors with which he is unfamiliar. But I remind myself that I certainly had not read a number of the great authors and classic books even after graduating from a liberal arts college. So I am content with the list to which he has thus far been exposed and the fact that he is always reading (lots of stuff I call "junk") but he can easily read a book every day or two in the summer.

 

The one area in which I feel he lacks is writing. I say that and then he'll knock my socks off with an essay. But the quality of writing is not consistent.

 

Given that my son's passion is history, I cannot see foresaking it. Similarly he has loved Latin studies, a subject that I think has benefitted his vocabulary and grammar work. So I would not want to give those subjects short shrift.

 

When I ask myself what I would do differently one thing that comes to mind is the concept of "homework", extra work outside the normal hours of school. Does my son have the study skills to organize this time for those extra projects, research papers, test review? This is a worry that I have, although I think I may be worrying too much. For years my son has completed and received awards for his 4-H project books, he has qualified for several state team competitions which required many hours of preparation, he did well on an AP exam, etc. So all of my hand wringing may be unnecessary. Yet I always worry. (I know, it's my job.)

 

Jane (Sorry Janice if I combined your question with Michelle's question concerning study skills. Both questions were on my mind.)

[Nan in Mass]

For my oldest, I sort of focused on skills K-8, because he was very bad at academic skills. On the other hand, I knew that his skills just weren't going to be up to snuff no matter what I did, so I tried not to spend all our time just doing skills. I felt like just because he was born bad at academic skills didn't mean he deserved to be served a double helping of the hardest and most boring school chores without ever getting to have any of the more interesting content stuff. And I also didn't want to take a child who was bad at academic skills and also bad at aquiring and retaining content in an academic way but very good at some other things, and spend all his time making him barely adaquate at academics, leaving the talents he was born with undevelopped.

 

I wound up compromising. We worked hard at the skills, but not as hard as we could have, and some like spelling, that seemed hopeless, we almost totally ignored. In other words, I let him remain bad at the skills - we worked on them, yes, but not until they came easily or fast. We worked on content, but did almost nothing to try to retain the content; reviewing would have eaten up ALL our time and he wouldn't have gotten to learn any new material. And I let him spend lots of time doing what he was good at, which actually turned out to be a very good way of learning content, and even some skills. They are more life skills than academic skills, but there is quite a lot of cross over between those, like learning to break a task into smaller pieces and setting goals and self-discipline. All in all, the experiment turned out pretty well, considering I didn't know what I was doing GRIN.

 

If I could do it again, I would take the same approach to the content and his own stuff, but I would do the skills part a little differently. I would make him read more. By the time he got to the books on TWTM list that were more difficult to read, the bridge books between children's literature and great books, he had listened to most of them on tape, so I didn't make him read them. If I could do it again, I'd make him actually read those books, even though he knew them well, and I'd pick others like them and have him read them aloud to me, summarizing as he went.

 

I would do more dictation. It is a nice wholistic way of learning spelling and punctuation. I wouldn't bother with spelling books. We only did a little dictation because I tried to do too much at a time and it ttttoooookkkk ffffoooorrrrreeeevvvveeeerrrrr. I wish I'd just done one sentence and let it take a long time. It would have been worth it.

 

I would do just one year of grammar and then guiltlessly switch to learning grammar through Latin. We began a grammar book and then abandonned it each year because it was so slow and we didn't have time and it didn't seem particularly important. Now I know that the way to force a higher reading level on a child is grammar and vocabulary. That is why they are important. The child may just aquire both by reading tons, if they are built that way, but some children need it spelled out. My oldest (whom I only homeschooled for 7th and 8th, before I found TWTM) needed it spelled out. I wish that when I'd had him home those two years, I'd done lots of grammar and vocab. For the other two, Latin has turned out to be a very efficient way of covering those two subjects.

 

I wish I'd had him write more. Again, it took forever and was very hard, but I wish we'd just done more of it anyway.

 

I wish I'd done more with outlining, but that seems to have worked out fine. I made him outline Kingfisher but never actually looked at his outlines LOL. I didn't have the energy.

 

I guess what it boils down to is this: TWTM works. I wish I'd just backed up as far as we needed to skills-wise, ignored the fact that I had a 6th grader doing 3rd grade skills, ignored the fact that we covered a quarter of what was recommended, and just done it anyway. I did that in math; I just somehow didn't have the guts to do it in English. And I am very grateful to TWTM for the instructions on how to do the content stuff. I think homeschooling would have failed if we'd tried to do it in a more school-like way. TWTM gave me permission to focus on content without testing or worrying about retention. And you know what? Now, at the end of it all, I can't believe how much history and science content my seive-brained son retained! I am so very thankful that I didn't ruin the fun of learning by drilling and reviewing content. I only did it enough to teach how to do it if you had to.

 

-Nan

[Michelle in MO]

When I ask myself what I would do differently one thing that comes to mind is the concept of "homework", extra work outside the normal hours of school. Does my son have the study skills to organize this time for those extra projects, research papers, test review?

 

It's one thing I said over and over and over again to them---you're going to have to get used to evening homework! Yes, it's happened, but they do seem to be rising to the occasion. (Like I mentioned on the other thread, I do wish the teachers would give the kids a little more of a "heads up" about the homework thing---at least giving the kids a few days' notice.)

 

I would make him read more.

 

Same here with my youngest! She's finally catching on to the reading thing, but I really wish I had focused so much more on this skill when she was younger. I did make her read a lot this summer, and even gave her exorbitant rewards for each book she read (dont' ask! :) ). It worked! She still reads some "twaddle", but has started to read worthier material. One good thing about their school is that the teachers urge the kids to be reading as much as the school day allows. Any time they have a few free minutes, they are supposed to get out books and read. That's great!

 

 

I guess what it boils down to is this: TWTM works. . . . TWTM gave me permission to focus on content without testing or worrying about retention. And you know what? Now, at the end of it all, I can't believe how much history and science content my seive-brained son retained! I am so very thankful that I didn't ruin the fun of learning by drilling and reviewing content. I only did it enough to teach how to do it if you had to.

 

Amen to that! It really does work. Even though we need to bump up the study/time management skills somewhat, I'm thankful so far that the girls aren't overwhelmed with their new environment. Even my youngest, who indeed seem to be "seive-brained" (LOL!) with material like grammar, has actually retained more than I thought she would!

[FloridaLisa]

A couple of years ago, I would have answered #1. But when my oldest was in about 8th grade, we made a course correction. At that point, I purposely chose to spend more time on the core areas. I stopped spending my nights and weekends master coordinating 3 different history programs and just had my kids read the next thing. They probably know more history from their own reading than from my daily teaching.

 

This isn't to say we've dropped those subjects. They have 4 years of upper level science and history/social sciences in high school. But I didn't want to find myself catching my kids up in writing, for instance, because we'd spent so much time on humdinger history programs. Part of my choice was the realization that with 7 children, I could only do so much and I needed to spend my teaching time on one-on-one core areas of mathematics and language arts and writing.

 

Also, like Michele in MN, I would not forego lots and lots of literature in the early years, read alouds or Latin. Like many of you, though, I consider Latin within the basic core because it teaches grammar, thinking skills and vocabulary.

 

Great question. It's a rude awakening to be up against the high school years and see what skill areas may still need work!

Lisa

[MaryM]

I'm pretty happy with the focus on skill development THRU solid content but if I would do one thing differently, it would be to not succumb to the whining about writing being too difficult. I'd start the paragraph with serious work earlier and have that blasted five paragraph essay done in 8th. Then I'd also not succumb to all the testing comparisons in high school!! Way too much time spent on standardized testing in high school, imho.

 

Mary

[Lori D.]

Our academic goals for homeschooling when we started back in 1st and 2nd grade were:

1. love of reading / ability to read

2. good critical thinking so they can make decisions in life and not be duped

 

 

While I WISH we were stronger in writing and spelling, and also wish either of my sons had an interest in music or the arts, now that we're in high school, looking back I think I did the best I could, considering the lack of enthusiasm (boys) and the specific learning disabilities (one son) I've had to learn how to work around. I think I did a good job of exposing them to a wide range of things, using the most interesting materials I could find, with lots of terrific books and field trips and hands-on experiments and kits.

 

Now in high school, we are working to solidify those weaker areas and areas of lack of interest, but that's okay, because they are a bit more mature now, and able to see the importance of it, and are (somewhat) more willing to bring attitudes in line and work at it.

 

And I think we've already achieved our main goals -- both enjoy good books, and both are *great* critical thinkers. So, while I may wish some things were a little different, I don't think I would change the way we did anything in K-8th. : ) I prayed each year to see what the needs for that year were, and asked for wisdom to meet those needs, and it's all been working out. I guess if I would change anything, it would be that *I* would have relaxed a little more. : )

 

How's that for a non-multiple choice answer!:tongue_smilie:

Hugs to you, Janice! Warmly, Lori D.

[laughing lioness]

After so many years I finally feel like I'm getting it right (which someone else also said). My kids are strong readers, love history, can recite, are skilled memorizers (is that a word?) and are or will be strong writers. I finally have a good grasp of memory work. The more we memorize, the more they memorize on their own! Their eled math is good and so is their science- (if only I could keep that going in high school! but that's my fault). I do wish that I had focused on Latin earlier with my older kids (but I didn't because I was intimidated- now we are just doing it and I am learnign with them- it is so exciting!). I feel that we have a firm grasp on grammar. So, finally, I am pleased with both content and skills. :001_smile:

[Murphy101]

If you could do grades K-8 OVER again in order to better PREPARE your student for high school, would you shift your focus in grades K-8?

 

Choice #1: Given a do-over opportunity I would spend MORE time on skills (reading skills, writing skills, and arithmetic) and LESS time on content (history, science, languages, the arts, literature) DURING grades K-8?

 

this is my vote.:)

without the skills in place, it's much harder to get handle the content required in the upper levels, imho.

[Peela]

I voted that I was happy with what we have done. I feel I have focused on skills a lot- even if my younger still struggles with them, we couldn't have done any better. And, I am happy with our history content. Science content was lacking but it doesn't seem to have mattered now they are doing classes for Science.

 

The one area though, now that I think about it, I wish we had spent more time was French. I feel we just keep going back to the beginning even though we have been dabbling in it for years. It's ok, but it would be nice to be further ahead by now.