How do YOU schedule book lists?

[Kristenaty]

Ok, upfront info.  I am a planner and love to have a plan all worked out even for the year before it starts.  So, there you go. Also, I'm afraid that if I don't have it on the schedule, it just won't happen.  Either DS will never quite finish the book, or we won't remember to discuss it if it's not penciled in, or I will forget to get the next book on the list. 

 

So how do you schedule reading through a book list such as in the WTM?  I use Homeschool Tracker + as well.  Do you go by X number of pages per day or week?  Do you just give them two weeks to a month to finish the book?  How you do remember and schedule them out?

[Loesje22000]

Books along history I schedule in Excel.

Per month we have a different theme / topic / era (= colomn 1)

World history, Dutch / Flemish history, books, dvd's have each their own colomn.

So in one month dd has to finish 1 row of materials.

 

Literature is organized by language.

Each language has its own frequency.

(For some is one book per 2 months okay, for other one book every other week)

I assign books with and without assignments. Some are for reading only, other books we dig deeper.

[lllll]

nm

Edited May 7, 2017 by _ -_-

[Bluegoat]

It depends on the book.

 

With non-fiction type books where I really want to get through a certain number of chapters, I look at how much time I have to spend and the number of chapters, plus review and introductions and such, and see how many weeks it will take.  Occoasionally during this exersize it becomes clear what I have in mind isn't doable and I have to start again.

 

With fiction type books or literature, I have tried that but I don't find it works as well.  So I am more flexible in my approach.  I will take a guess at how long it will take, maybe based on so many chapters a day, or by an amount of time.  Then I try and set a period for reading that book - say, 2 weeks.  But I find the most important thing is to prioritize certain books to be read.  I might pick to in each term that we need to do, and we'll do them first in that term.  Then, if we work through them well we can always add more. 

[Hunter]

I know some people find this appallingly negligent, BUT...

 

180 school days minus equivalent for sickness, field trips, assemblies, holidays, etc= 160 days.

 

45 minute class-15 minutes for attendance and discipline and interruptions= 30 mins.

 

160x0.5=80. So 80 hours is on-task work. I add 20 minutes for homework.

 

I end out with 100 hours for a high school course credit. And there is no way I'll expect more from younger students!!!!!!

 

Once I have decided how much of the 100 hours will be devoted to reading, I check the audio book lengths at audible.com or librivox. I adjust that amount if I think the student will be reading that book faster or slower.

 

So if 30 hours of a subject is going to be spend reading, and the average book is 3 hours long, and the student reads at an adult rate, I have time for 10 books.

 

Ezrabean taught me how to make hard choices. First discard all the ones you want least. Get those out of the way. Then remove just a few more. Then remove just a few more. Don't focus on which ones you think you want. Instead peel away the ones least important, like layers of an onion, until you discover what is at the center.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Hunter

[regentrude]

I do not. I love planning as in making a list and researching books. I end up with a list of more than we can finish.

But I don't tell my children how fast or slow they have to read.

I scheduled how much time they should spend on school and made sure that part of that time was spent on reading from the book list.

I see no point in making my kid put down a book she is engrossed in just because the scheduled reading time is over, nor would I hurry them through a book when they still need more time to read, nor would I withhold the next book from them since the scheduled day has not yet arrived.

So, the schedule would be a piece of paper  that had no relation to my educational philosophy or to the reality of my homeschool.

 

I would have a list, and they got as far on the list as they got. The results of that approach have been outstanding. And my kids still love to read as adults.

 

Edited May 2, 2017 by regentrude

[Hunter]

When PLANNING, I have done better when I planned "school" that equalled "school" and then knew that everything we added was because we WANTED to. And that if we did NOT want to, we didn't have to.

 

With my oldest, he did a LOT of NOT wanting to. He wasn't my academic.

 

My divorce was MESSY. Those that have been hanging around long-term know some, newbies very little. But anyway, after almost 10 years of hearing very little from my oldest, I talked to him for 6 hours straight just last week, and the thing that struck me most was how much his English language skills have grown, and all without being in school.

 

He was always my unschooler. Working not schooling. Except for BARELY logging the absolute minimum. Somehow he learned some serious language skills. Powerful language skills. Even talking for 6 hours, there was so much to catch up on. We talked less about how he had learned, and more about whether he understood the power he had, and was he using it fairly and wisely.

 

Sometimes less planned is better. Sometimes LIFE teaches more than completed LONG booklists.

[scoutingmom]

I know some people find this appallingly negligent, BUT...

 

180 school days minus equivalent for sickness, field trips, assemblies, holidays, etc= 160 days.

 

45 minute class-15 minutes for attendance and discipline and interruptions= 30 mins.

 

160x0.5=80. So 80 hours is on-task work. I add 20 minutes for homework.

 

I end out with 100 hours for a high school course credit. And there is no way I'll expect more from younger students!!!!!!

 

Once I have decided how much of the 100 hours will be devoted to reading, I check the audio book lengths at audible.com or librivox. I adjust that amount if I think the student will be reading that book faster or slower.

 

So if 30 hours of a subject is going to be spend reading, and the average book is 3 hours long, and the student reads at an adult rate, I have time for 10 books.

 

Ezrabean taught me how to make hard choices. First discard all the ones you want least. Get those out of the way. Then remove just a few more. Then remove just a few more. Don't focus on which ones you think you want. Instead peel away the ones least important, like layers of an onion, until you discover what is at the center.

That is a fantastic method! Thanks!

 

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[LMD]

I write a big list. Keep adding to it.

I buy lots of books and then some more.

I put a stack on a shelf and tell the child that they get to read these excellent books this year.

Then child and I take turns in choosing the next book.

Child tells me about what they've read most days.

Child fills in reading log when finished (or when we remember) and we talk about it.

 

Discussing specifics isn't really planned out as such. WTM has generic discussion starter questions, every few weeks we simply sit down and chat about some of them as they relate to the current book. I might ask the child to write about it. Keeping it simple is important here!

[LMD]

Hunter... just... thank you for posting.

[Guest]

Hunter... just... thank you for posting.

 

:iagree:

 

Hunter, sometimes I wish you would write a book. I don't come at everything from the same angle as you, as obviously none of us do, but I usually find so many inherently practical things in your posts. Truly. 

[TABmom]

I put a bunch of books in a bin that are "mom's picks". He has to spend 30 min/day reading my choice and 30 minutes reading whatever he wants. Often, he uses his choice to finish reading my choice because he really got into it. Sometimes, I let my choice be something that he has been reading and wants to finish. He's in the 4th grade.

[Momto6inIN]

I have a long list of books for each time period of history combined with any science/health books that go along with our topic for the year. I give them the list and tell them to pick what they want and mark off the books as they get done with them. They are assigned to read 30-45 min/day from this list but often they read more because they like the books I pick. :)

 

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