Dividing a course between two years

[mom2scouts]

I've made several posts about my son's difficulty with physics this year. At first he was just avoiding it because of the math and he didn't make much progress at all. Thanks to the Hive, we used videos and signed up for the self paced class on virtual homeschool group and things are going much better. He's reading, doing the problems, doing labs, and passing the online quizzes. We essentially started the class over in the second semester of the year. I think it would be advantageous to just keep moving forward and take as long as needed to finish the course, likely taking a year and a half. How would I show that on his transcript? Should I just not show any physics this year and only put physics on his senior year? Should I show a one semester class called something like Intro. to Physics? Some of the public schools will divide classes like algebra into two year courses and label them Algebra A and Algebra B. I won't give him two credits, so maybe Physics A and Physics B would each be a 0.5 credit course? I want to give him credit for the work he's doing this semester without giving him more than he deserves. Taking the time to understand something is a benefit of homeschooling, but I'm not sure how to show it in his records.

[Lori D.]

We spread out all of our sciences over more than 1 year, so we completed 3 credits with labs over 4 years. (Neither DS was headed toward a STEM field at that time.) My transcript was organized by subject, so I didn't have to worry about what was done in each year. It looked something like this:

Science
course . . . . . . . . credit . . . . grade
Biology . . . . . . .1.00 . . . . . X
Anatomy . . . . . .0.50 . . . . .X
Chemistry . . . . .1.00 . . . . . X
Physics . . . . . . . 0.50 . . . . .X
total credit/GPA . .3.00 . . . . X.XX

Math
course . . . . . . . . credit . . . . grade
Algebra 1 . . . . . 1.00 . . . . . X
Geometry . . . .  1.00 . . . . . X
Algebra 2 . . . . . 1.00 . . . . .X
Pre-Calculus . . .1.00 . . . . .X
total credit/GPA . .4.00 . . . . X.XX

English
course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . credit . . . . grade
English 9: Ancient Lit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.00 . . . . . X
English 10: Worldviews in Classic Sci-Fi Lit.   1.00 . . . . . X
English 11: American Lit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1.00 . . . . . X
English 12: British Lit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.00 . . . . . X
total credit/GPA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.00 . . . . X.XX

ETC.


But, if you do need to organize by grade/year rather than by subject, you could just put 0.5 credit in each of the years he worked on Physics, and not worry about doing a "part a" and "part b". BEST of luck as you wear your administrator hat, and move forward with Physics at DS's best pace! Warmly, Lori D.

Edited February 19, 2020 by Lori D.

[klmama]

I would just give .5 credit for physics this year and .5 next year.  If you want or have to show the grades by semester, I'd give this year's .5 credit for 2nd semester.

[8filltheheart]

AP alg based physics is now taught over 2 yrs. It will probably look normal! You could call them A, B or 1,2 or by topic (mechanics, E&M) I would probably give a full credit for each if he puts a full yr into both.

Edited February 19, 2020 by 8FillTheHeart

[lewelma]

I put the courses in the year that the majority of the work was completed.  

[mom2scouts]

On 2/18/2020 at 11:59 PM, 8FillTheHeart said:

AP alg based physics is now taught over 2 yrs. It will probably look normal! You could call them A, B or 1,2 or by topic (mechanics, E&M) I would probably give a full credit for each if he puts a full yr into both.

That's my problem. There's no way I'm giving him credit for the first semester of this year because he did so little. He's basically starting from the beginning of the book in the second semester and will end up with 1.5 years of physics. I have some things that will require a transcipt at the end of this year and I'm trying to decide if or how I'll show one semester of physics on the transcript.

[Reefgazer]

I’ve awarded credit in the year the course was completed, and I have carried a course over 2 years, for various reasons.

[lewelma]

We ended up carrying Chemistry over 3 years. In NZ there are national exams, my son simply worked his way through the 6 exams on offer over 3 years, and in the end I gave him credit for a full year of Chemistry and a half credit for organic chemistry because I thought he had done more than a year's worth of content. (A full course in NZ is 14-18 credits with 22 on offer)  He earned 22 NZ credits in total. 10th grade: 7 credits. 11th grade: 10 credits 12th grade: 5 credits.  No school wants to see Chemistry split up in some sort of 7/22, 10/22 and 5/22nd credits, even though that is what was accurate and actually on his NZ national exam register that I went to all the universities he applied to. I claimed Chemistry for 11th grade, and made organic chem for 12th grade, even though NZ does not consider organic a separate course.  It is outside of the American standard chemistry curriculum, so I gave him credit on his transcript.  In addition, I shifted his entire education to the Northern hemisphere calendar, so it wasn't even 10th, 11th, and 12th grade here because school years here run Feb - November. 

In the end you really just make it up.  Your kid does some learning, you consider what makes sense in the educational environment, you write it in a way that people are used to seeing.  You do not need to be pedantic.  The transcript is a *summary* document, so you write it in a way that best summarizes the learning that has taken place. 

Edited February 23, 2020 by lewelma

[EKS]

You could simply give a full credit in the year he completes the course, or you could arrange the transcript by subject, which avoids the issue of when altogether.   

[BusyMom5]

Any way he can complete it over the summer?  Sometimes when it's a difficult course, I've let it go all through the summer- if it's just the one course it doesnt seem like as much.  Wwve finished courses in September or October a few times.  I put the credit in the year in which it makes sense- I would put 1 credit for this year and have another science credit ready to start when hes finished.  

 

Also, not sure what you are using, but be sure your expectations are reasonable- he probably doesnt have to do the entire book.