Assessment

[Hadley]

Hello again!  I introduced myself yesterday over on the Chat board, so today I’m going to jump in with my first question.

Does every course have to have a large amount of written assessment in order to be assigned high school credit?  For instance, I have a son with a strong STEM bent.  He will willingly read literature and write correctly formatted MLA papers of literary analysis, but is his time better spent writing lab reports?  

This same son and I have fabulous discussions about novels, government, and philosophy.  We can follow a rabbit trail and talk for days about themes or ideas.  I consider that true assessment.  Must I then have some sort or written assessment from him in order to give credit for reading that book, primary source, etc.?

I absolutely understand that our students need to be able to produce different types of writing for different types of classes and audiences.  My question is, do they have to write papers in every subject every year?  Is discussion a valuable assessment tool?

I’m really interested in your opinions.

[8filltheheart]

Your approach is perfectly acceptable.

[Hadley]

Thank you!  Short, sweet , and to the point. I appreciate the reassurance.  I don’t want to break my son, or his transcripts!

He has also written several research papers, etc., but I have an uneven writing load in some of his classes.  For instance, AP US History had a large stack of output.  Philosophy has not so much...

 

[Farrar]

I agree. I do think there should be some level of output, but an in depth discussion is a form of output. And less output for some courses compared to others is totally fine.

[Roadrunner]

Our local high school (a highly ranked one) has number of electives that only require some reading and in class discussion. Philosophy class comes to mind. 

[Hadley]

Thank you all for taking the time to reply!  I’ll sleep much better tonight. 😉

Eleven years into this homeschooling game, and I’m still second-guessing everything!