My two high schooler absolutely hate reading based history and science.

[KidsHappen]

How can I get them through the couses they need with a minimal amount of reading. Something lecture and lab based? Needs to be from a secular perspective. Thanks.

[islandmama]

Have you seen Walch Publishing?

http://www.walch.com/index.php

They have the "Short Lessons in World History/US History" and Power Basics science... HTH!

[Michelle in MO]

one good biology book from a secular perspective is Campbell's Exploring Life. Here's a recent thread that discussed that text.

 

HTH!

[Jane in NC]

How can I get them through the couses they need with a minimal amount of reading. Something lecture and lab based? Needs to be from a secular perspective. Thanks.

 

Are these two college bound? If so, this may be something that they just need to get over. Some college freshmen crash and burn when they cannot keep up with several hundred pages of reading weekly.

 

If text book reading is the problem, perhaps you could ease them into it by using TC or Annenberg lectures accompanied by books that focus on specific topics. Example: if they are studying Ancients, they could watch TC lectures, then read Plato's Republic, Everitt's bio of Cicero, etc.

 

What sciences are under consideration?

 

Jane

[bettyandbob]

In this situation, I would do a combination of materials from Walch Publishing and Teaching Company lectures. Walch Publishing had workbook materials for high school subjects. I've used the high school history and science with a middle schooler. If I used these with TC materials, I'd assign notetaking for the lectures.

 

However, I'd probably do this only in class and push the reading in the other (maybe build up slowly). Whether they go to college or not, they will have to tolerate nonfiction reading in life.

[Michelle in MO]

Are these two college bound? If so, this may be something that they just need to get over. Some college freshmen crash and burn when they cannot keep up with several hundred pages of reading weekly.

 

When I was in college, I decided to take an introductory human anatomy and physiology course at another college near the university I attended. It was offered as a summer session, and that summer session overlapped with the spring finals I had to take at the university. It was the most fascinating and very best science class I've ever taken. However, in one month we had to read and practically memorize and 800+ page book on human anatomy and physiology: all the bones of the body, muscles and muscle groups, organ systems, even minutiae like the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. The prof. was fantastic, but didn't expect any less of us because we were doing the course over one month instead of over the course of a semester. So, it was a huge chunk of material; the prof. made it not only palatable but engrossing.

 

Not all college courses would be like this, but it is something to be prepared for.

[KidsHappen]

The both need Biology and Chemistry with labs and then American and World history. I just find it strange that they both are having so much trouble with it. Leads me to believe that textbook learning is not for them. I was planning to look into TC and I will give Walch a check as well. Thanks.

[Gwen in VA]

When you say "not reading-based", do you mean that you don't want to use "living books" but texts are okay, or are you saying that you want to avoid ALL books?

 

If you want tto avoid "living books" -- my kids agree! We switched from mostly Living books" to mostly texts about sophomore year of high school, and my kids found the texts easier to handle. The great thing about getting kids used to using texts is that then college is MUCH easier!

 

If you want to avoid living books all together, i wouldn't. If the kids are college-bound, they need to learn how to learn from books, like several other people have said.

 

We are using the Thinkwell biology lectures to supplement our text, and they are WONDERFUL! We have also enjoyed several of the Teaching Company courses. I would, however, use the lectures in addition to and NOT instead of texts.

[danielle]

Could there be any kind of reading disability issues? If reading is in any way an effort, it will never be pleasurable. My dh is a slow reader, struggled with college academics (luckily he was a studio art major) and was diagnosed in his 40s with ADHD. It would have made a huge difference in his earlier life if he would have known what the reason was that he needs to re-read pages several times and loses track of the ideas. Just a thought that maybe you might want to consider.

 

BTW, by grad school I once added up all the books from the various syllabi and concluded I needed to read at least one book PER DAY--and believe me these weren't Stephen King. Text heavy learning is just a really strong feature of college, as everyone has pointed out.

Danielle

[Michelle in MO]

Could there be any kind of reading disability issues? If reading is in any way an effort, it will never be pleasurable. My dh is a slow reader, struggled with college academics (luckily he was a studio art major) and was diagnosed in his 40s with ADHD. It would have made a huge difference in his earlier life if he would have known what the reason was that he needs to re-read pages several times and loses track of the ideas. Just a thought that maybe you might want to consider.

 

My best friend from elementary/junior high school was diagnosed very late in life with dyslexia. Had she learned about this problem earlier, it might have saved her literally years of headaches trying to get through college. At one point she was on academic probation. Once she found on what the problem was, she was allowed extra time for tests and also discovered books on tape/CD. She went from almost being dropped from her program to getting straight A's. She now holds a PhD in chemistry from Georgia Tech., and is an instructor at Georgia State. A reading disability issue is not a reflection of the student's intelligence at all.

 

At any rate, you might possibly check into this if reading is a real struggle for your kids. HTH!

[JennW in SoCal]

What about hanging their history courses on a hook based on their interests? My son does have learning disabilities, not dyslexia, but traditional kinds of courses don't fit him very well. Instead I've always tried to incorporate his interests into his academics, using that hook to draw him into subjects, to get him to read or learn things that he would never get if it were presented through a text book.

 

For instance, I had him study 20th century American history via the theater: He watched that PBS documentary series on Broadway, he read a couple of autobiographies of playwrights and several plays. He also had a co-op course that touched upon the more traditional aspects of history, but it alone wasn't enough, and our theater studies alone weren't enough, but the two combined made for an interesting year.

 

For 20th century world history, he watched a fantastic BBC documentary on WWI, then read and watched everything he could find on WWII, including the Hollywood response to the war effort. He read Maus, which is a prize winning graphic novel about the holocaust, he read Caine Mutiny, a Pulitzer Prize winning, semi-autobiographical novel about the Navy in WWII, and I can't think of what else. He did move onto the 1950s by the end of the year, but as WWII is a passionate interest of his, it was the meat of the course.

 

We've used Teaching Company courses, too, with great success. Audio books can be really helpful. I do agree that if your kids are college bound, they should be prepared for the amount of reading expected in college. But my ds is not going the traditional route with anything, so I've adapted and tweaked anything and everything.

 

What I've done isn't for everyone, but I thought it might give some ideas of other ways to approach these topics.

[Veronica in VA]

What about hanging their history courses on a hook based on their interests? My son does have learning disabilities, not dyslexia, but traditional kinds of courses don't fit him very well. Instead I've always tried to incorporate his interests into his academics, using that hook to draw him into subjects, to get him to read or learn things that he would never get if it were presented through a text book.

 

For instance, I had him study 20th century American history via the theater: He watched that PBS documentary series on Broadway, he read a couple of autobiographies of playwrights and several plays. He also had a co-op course that touched upon the more traditional aspects of history, but it alone wasn't enough, and our theater studies alone weren't enough, but the two combined made for an interesting year.

 

For 20th century world history, he watched a fantastic BBC documentary on WWI, then read and watched everything he could find on WWII, including the Hollywood response to the war effort. He read Maus, which is a prize winning graphic novel about the holocaust, he read Caine Mutiny, a Pulitzer Prize winning, semi-autobiographical novel about the Navy in WWII, and I can't think of what else. He did move onto the 1950s by the end of the year, but as WWII is a passionate interest of his, it was the meat of the course.

 

We've used Teaching Company courses, too, with great success. Audio books can be really helpful. I do agree that if your kids are college bound, they should be prepared for the amount of reading expected in college. But my ds is not going the traditional route with anything, so I've adapted and tweaked anything and everything.

 

What I've done isn't for everyone, but I thought it might give some ideas of other ways to approach these topics.

 

I think this is a great idea! Recently (today as a matter of fact:D) I had my dd start doing a collage time line for each decade of the 20th century. She has to do a poster board for each decade, and it can include : major events, leaders, fashions of the period (which is her favorite part), music, art, maps, etc. I am letting her run with this idea and put together whatever she thinks is important and interesting. For the first decade she was most interested in Coco Chanel - lol - but also chose political cartoons, silent movies, a speech from T. Roosevelt, and information on the Panama Canal.

 

Veronica

[Nan in Mass]

Answering textbook questions is a truly bizarre activity, something you have to learn how to do. There are tons of unwritten assumptions behind the questions. If they say sponge, is the sponge wet or dry? These accounted for lots of the wrong answers my children came up with. I only found about about them by asking them by telling my children the answer I would have given and having them, "Oh! But I thought such and such." You have to restate what the book says. My children tended to skip over the book's answer and give an unobvious detail or implication or something, assuming that they couldn't possibly mean them to just repeat back something so obvious. You have to generalize, but not too much (one of mine generalized things practically out of the range of the subject), or give details or examples or expand on things, but not too much. How much is very tricky. We don't tend to see these problems because we've had years and years of practice with this sort of question, but they are a problem for someone who hasn't done much work in a standard classroom environment or who has grown up elsewhere. I hate to say it, but if that is the problem and they are college bound, you probably are going to have to suffer through a few textbooks explaining what the answer should have been until they catch on. This has been one of the disadvantages of TWTM and living books. (A small one in my opinion.) If not, if they can do it but just don't want to, then by all means, find a different way of learning the material. I do that quite often.

-Nan