housemouse Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 In order for the class to be designated honors, does it have to state in the text it is honors course? Ds will be doing BJU Algebra and Geometry and both of them have different tracks and depending on which track you do (and which problems you complete)- it can be either regular or honors. That is how the writer of the textbook explained it to me and how they use it in the schools that use their textbooks. But there is nothing on paper that says this is honors and this is regular. Can it still designated honors even if there is nothing that specifically states honors? Thank you for any advise. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katilac Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 The book itself does not have to say honors. I don't know that I've ever seen that, actually. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arcadia Posted May 19, 2016 Share Posted May 19, 2016 The textbooks/curriculum doesn't say honors. It is the depth and width covered by the teacher using the curriculum. Also some universities are strict about what they accept as honors on the transcript for GPA purposes. For example, UC (California) has rules on what honors classes can be counted for a weighted GPA. E.g UC faq on honors courses for weighted GPA http://ucop.edu/agguide/a-g-requirements/honors/index.html 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StillStanding Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Our umbrella school says: Honors Courses: Please be aware that not all homeschool courses are honors, even though the material is more advanced than traditional public school resources. Please use the following guidelines when determining if a course is designated as an Honors course: The honors course is taken through a tutorial and designated by the teacher as an Honors course. The curriculum is designated as an Honors course by the publisher. The course is supplemented to MAKE the course Honors. Please provide documentation such as a detailed course description in the grade reporting section of your account. Note: Honors courses are normally taught on a college level using college level texts. Note: In TN, we do not weight the Honors courses, but if a student needs a weighted transcript for a particular scholarship, we can provide one. Last night I went to a local, public high school, graduation and the sad thing is that anyone with an ACT over 22 graduated with honors. Only around 20 out of 350 got up to be recognized..... Yup, that is why we homeschool. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
laughing lioness Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 (edited) Most high school texts are simply College Prep- not honors, but you could write an addendum that you do in addition to a CP course to create an Honors course. Here's a place to start. There is a list at the top with the 5 objectives of an honors course. Edited May 21, 2016 by laughing lioness 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Penguin Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 (edited) Our umbrella school only allows courses taught to AP or college level to be designated Honors. There is a whole whole lot of YMMV to your question. Edited May 22, 2016 by Penguin Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DebbS Posted May 21, 2016 Share Posted May 21, 2016 Honors can mean many things. For my kids transcripts, I defined with a footnote how I differentiated honors courses from regular courses. For us, honors courses were either AP level followed by an AP test or were courses taught by college profs in our co-op that were from the same syllabi, with the same expectations as the college level courses that they taught. Your definition may vary but whatever it is, it's important to spell it out. I weighted honors courses but included both weighted and unweighted columns on my transcript. That way, the college could use whichever GPA they wanted to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pistachio mom Posted May 27, 2016 Share Posted May 27, 2016 (edited) Hi, My daughter just finished up the BJU Algebra 1. The honors option works like this: The book is written with different levels in mind. Each lesson has extra problems for the honors level (mainly ex C and the Dominion problems that link algebra to really cool physical science, economics, and business applications. Also, each chapter has an extra optional lesson or two meant for the students who are able to do them. The test key is written so that you know which lesson in the chapter each question correlated to, so the teacher can omit the honors test questions for the regular college prep students. When I compared the concepts in our BJ Algebra to our Thinkwell online Algebra (I couldn't afford the BJ videos...) BJ Algebra goes far beyond Thinkwell in the concepts taught. The thinkwell video access did not help us very much because our course was much more difficult. I have not compared it to our state standards, but when I looked online at the youtube robbob videos, many of the second semester concepts in our Alg 1 book are classified with the Alg 2 online teaching videos. So, in my opinion, BJ Algebra 1 has everything in it you need to teach an honors level algebra - if you choose to do the Dominion problems and the extra lessons..... It even includes several optional web research topics that could easily be added to your course description as "additional work." One way to designate a course as honors is to compare it to the concepts in your state depart of ed spells out for that particular course, or to one of your local public highschool's course syllabus and list what your course includes that is "above and beyond." Edited May 27, 2016 by Pistachio mom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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