Jump to content

Menu

Designing your own high school curriculum--questions


Recommended Posts

I was inspired by another thread to ask these questions here.

I am planning a medieval history course (from scratch) next year which is a mix of a portion of a textbook used as a spine and some great books.  I am slowly (SLOWLY) working through reading the great books, answering questions in the study guide I purchased (and eliminating questions that I don't think are useful), and revising my schedule based on how long it is taking me to read things.  

But I am concerned at this point that I will never get to reading through the textbook and assessing how long that should/could take because I also have another homegrown course for Cultural Geography and World Religions that I need to work on for my younger one, and at some point I just need to be "done" with planning the Medieval history.

So my questions are: 

How much reading ahead do you typically do?  (Especially with a textbook? Note: there is no teacher book for the text I selected)

What strategies help you to discipline yourself to do the reading ahead (instead of posting on the forums, for example. LOL)?

How do you assess if the load of work you are assigning is too much/too little/just right? Or do you overload it at the beginning and throw things off the boat as you sail along?

What recordkeeping (time wise, I guess?) does your student use to track hours (if you do this)? If you don't track it, how do you make notes to justify giving credit (assuming you aren't using one textbook such as with a subject like math)?

ETA: new question:  Do you add "catch up days/weeks" to your schedule?

I am sure I have more questions, but they are not coming to me immediately.  

 

Edited by cintinative
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 minutes ago, cintinative said:

So my questions are: 

How much reading ahead do you typically do?  (Especially with a textbook? Note: there is no teacher book for the text I selected)

What strategies help you to discipline yourself to do the reading ahead (instead of posting on the forums, for example. LOL)?

How do you assess if the load of work you are assigning is too much/too little/just right? Or do you overload it at the beginning and throw things off the boat as you sail along?

What recordkeeping (time wise, I guess?) does your student use to track hours (if you do this)? If you don't track it, how do you make notes to justify giving credit (assuming you aren't using one textbook such as with a subject like math)?

I am sure I have more questions, but they are not coming to me immediately.  

My rising 10th graders are doing Medieval History right now. We started in April and we will probably finish at the end of December.

I do very little reading ahead, I just haven't had time. I read along with at the same time, which also means the material is fresh in my mind and helps me ask questions and spur discussion.

Scheduling my reading is what works for getting me to read something that needs to be read with intent. I schedule by the week usually. My reading time is usually between 8 and 9. That is not without interruption, though, and other kinds of reading often happen then, so it isn't great. This reality is part of what has limited my reading ahead ability.

I assess load as best I can during scheduling time. I start by blocking out, on a paper schedule, the amount of time needed to complete a credit. Then I subtract time for videos (easy, but not always applicable). After that I try to reasonably allocate reading time. I always overestimate reading speed, but I've gotten better over the years. I also mark it time for discussion on a regular basis, partly because this is how I know if reading rate is staying on track. Most of the classes I design rely on discussion for evaluation. Sometimes as part of English I will assign a paper on a history or science topic, though. I always have to make adjustments as we go, so I try to prioritize the things I want to cover to make that easier in the moment.

I don't track time (unless we are having a problem), but I have a weekly schedule and as long as we are spending that time (ish) we are good. They often have to use discretionary time to finish up reading or assignments, so have no concern that I am over-reporting. I also use my teacher-judgment powers. Have they accomplished something that I can find value in? When I am in the weeds I worry about this, but when I step back and look at the sum total I am generally very pleased.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, Plum said:

I always plan for too much and then have to scale it back. 

 

ETA: generally, this is my philosophy. Throw the extra weight off the boat to keep it from sinking.

I designed an "summer add-on" to my son's modern history that he did this year to make it a US history year for credit. What I am finding is that I really underestimated the time it would take him to complete the daily readings. Reading the chapter plus completing the guided reading notebook I created is taking an average of 1.5 hours. I was hoping for 45 minutes to an hour. I really don't think it is that he is a pokey reader, so it's making me feel a bit worried about my plans for this coming year.  

 

19 minutes ago, Plum said:

I look forward to more responses because sometimes I worry I'm doing it all wrong. I don't read ahead, just plan ahead and read alongside. Maybe that's not going to work for high school, but that's what I've been doing for middle. 


I am worried that by reading ahead this far I will forget the material by the time we get to discuss it. However, I also know that I am running multiple other subjects myself and I am worried I will lack the discipline to do the reading alongside of him.  I can't imagine trying to discuss some of these great books without having read them, so I am really trying to push through.

With the other course I am designing for my youngest, I am feeling a bit less concerned about not doing all the reading. Mostly I am concerned that I just have too much, and that I will struggle to edit my schedule when it comes to the need to do that. Everything seems important right now (perhaps because I haven't read them yet? LOL.)

Edited by cintinative
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, cintinative said:

I was inspired by another thread to ask these questions here.

I am planning a medieval history course (from scratch) next year which is a mix of a portion of a textbook used as a spine and some great books.  I am slowly (SLOWLY) working through reading the great books, answering questions in the study guide I purchased (and eliminating questions that I don't think are useful), and revising my schedule based on how long it is taking me to read things.  

But I am concerned at this point that I will never get to reading through the textbook and assessing how long that should/could take because I also have another homegrown course for Cultural Geography and World Religions that I need to work on for my younger one, and at some point I just need to be "done" with planning the Medieval history.

So my questions are: 

How much reading ahead do you typically do?  (Especially with a textbook? Note: there is no teacher book for the text I selected)

What strategies help you to discipline yourself to do the reading ahead (instead of posting on the forums, for example. LOL)?

How do you assess if the load of work you are assigning is too much/too little/just right? Or do you overload it at the beginning and throw things off the boat as you sail along?

What recordkeeping (time wise, I guess?) does your student use to track hours (if you do this)? If you don't track it, how do you make notes to justify giving credit (assuming you aren't using one textbook such as with a subject like math)?

ETA: new question:  Do you add "catch up days/weeks" to your schedule?

I am sure I have more questions, but they are not coming to me immediately.  

 

This may not help you, but ... I often just don't read ahead or along with them. 🙂 I do skim and make sure I'm familiar with the topics covered as I plan the course, but I don't read the resources. When I do a homemade course, often their output assignment is to teach the material to me, verbally through a presentation or a discussion. I have enough of a passing acquaintance with the material in order to tell if they get radically off track, but one of the best ways to really learn something is to teach it to someone else. So they teach me 🙂 

I schedule the most important (to me) resources first so that if we end up taking a lot more time than I thought, then I know the essential stuff is covered. I tell them to make sure they are spending approx 45-60 min/day on it and to stop after that.

We only do "regular" school 4 days/week, even with my high schoolers, so Fridays are our catch up/extracurriucular day.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, Momto6inIN said:

This may not help you, but ... I often just don't read ahead or along with them. 🙂 I do skim and make sure I'm familiar with the topics covered as I plan the course, but I don't read the resources. When I do a homemade course, often their output assignment is to teach the material to me, verbally through a presentation or a discussion. I have enough of a passing acquaintance with the material in order to tell if they get radically off track, but one of the best ways to really learn something is to teach it to someone else. So they teach me 🙂 

I think this might work for something like Biology because of my background, but until this year I had never read The Prince or The Confessions by Augustine, and I am sure I would fail miserably if I tried to just skim them and then lead a discussion.  LOL. I am a math and science girl, and this stuff just doesn't come naturally to me. I don't think I could claim to have anything close to a "passing acquaintance" with the great books.  Maybe it depends on what sort of history education you received yourself? My high school world history was taught by a football coach who could care less. I had one exceptional teacher for American history.  If we learned true world history prior to high school, I retained nothing of it. My literature education was not quite so dismal but not rich with great books and challenging literature.  I feel like the last nine years have been a crash course in the history and lit education I never received. 😃 

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, cintinative said:

I think this might work for something like Biology because of my background, but until this year I had never read The Prince or The Confessions by Augustine, and I am sure I would fail miserably if I tried to just skim them and then lead a discussion.  LOL. I am a math and science girl, and this stuff just doesn't come naturally to me. I don't think I could claim to have anything close to a "passing acquaintance" with the great books.  Maybe it depends on what sort of history education you received yourself? My high school world history was taught by a football coach who could care less. I had one exceptional teacher for American history.  If we learned true world history prior to high school, I retained nothing of it. My literature education was not quite so dismal but not rich with great books and challenging literature.  I feel like the last nine years have been a crash course in the history and lit education I never received. 😃 

I do read their lit selections, just not their textbooks. I couldn't intelligently hold a discussion on Don Quixote without reading it! 😉 If I had to rely solely on my own high school education, I couldn't do it either. But between college and homeschooling (SotW and History of US and K12's Human Odyssey and Great Courses lectures that I've watched with them) I've absorbed enough to be able to skim the textbooks and have it be enough. I don't always recall the details, but the major themes come through and as they "teach" me the material it comes back enough for me to lead a meaty discussion, which I consider to be the most important part of the course, not the names/dates/details from a textbook.

Could I teach a college seminar in this manner? No. But I can lead a 9th/10th/11th grader through world cultures and religion, world history, and US history.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, cintinative said:

[... I often just don't read ahead or along with them. 🙂 I do skim and make sure I'm familiar with the topics covered as I plan the course, but I don't read the resources. -- Momto6inIN]

...My literature education was not quite so dismal but not rich with great books and challenging literature.  I feel like the last nine years have been a crash course in the history and lit education I never received. 😃 

Sparknotes and Cliffs Notes have pretty decent chapter summaries, so if you have to miss some chapters, you can skim and keep up with key plot points and character choices that way. Both also have short articles of analysis for the chapters, so that can point you toward key themes and "big ideas" going on in the work, beyond just plot.

Also, we did a lot of our literature aloud together, passing the book around. That allowed us to address confusions and learn vocabulary in the moment, but to also discuss together in the moment. However, I only had 2 DSs, close in age, so that worked well for us. Not very easy to do if you have a large family, or just a few children widely-spaced in age.

Edited by Lori D.
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Momto6inIN said:

I couldn't intelligently hold a discussion on Don Quixote without reading it! 😉

I'm impressed. I think I started Don Q about 3 years ago and I'm finally within spitting distance of the end. Thank goodness I've been taking notes as I go or I would have to keep starting over. This is the book I look to when I think, "maybe I should be reading ahead. 🤔 Um, nope! I would have had to start about 7 years ago!" Gracias Señor Quixote! for keeping me real.

  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, cintinative said:

...How much reading ahead do you typically do?  (Especially with a textbook? Note: there is no teacher book for the text I selected)...

For history text -- either read it together, or on my own but the same week, or I just skimmed. Sometimes I skipped, and had them write out short answers to questions at the end of a section.
 

7 hours ago, cintinative said:

...What strategies help you to discipline yourself to do the reading ahead (instead of posting on the forums, for example. LOL)?...

Their school hours were my school hours, too. Since DS#2 esp. needed a lot of support and tutoring all through high school, it was just easier to commit to always being right there to be able to help at a moment's notice. But that also gave me the the time between being needed to do grading, pre-reading, research, etc.

 

7 hours ago, cintinative said:

... How do you assess if the load of work you are assigning is too much/too little/just right? Or do you overload it at the beginning and throw things off the boat as you sail along?

By the time we hit high school, we'd been homeschooling long enough that I had a good idea of how long it took us to read, do a writing assignment, do a math lesson, etc. I shot for about 4-5 hours/week for each DIY courses.

I did put a ** next to some resources to remind myself that if we were falling behind, I could just entirely drop the next starred item and get back on track.

And sometimes we would wait and do a lighter/fun supplement to enjoy in the summer. For example, a few works of literature I just bumped to the summer and we did them for fun, rather than as serious/deep study. Similarly for History, I bumped just a few documentaries and feature films set in the history time period to enjoy as fun viewing in the summer.

BTW -- In designing your own courses, "too little" is almost never a problem, lol. We ALL want to do WAAAAYYYY more than is reasonable for 1.0 credit of work, accrued roughly at a rate of 4-5 hours/week... 😂

 

7 hours ago, cintinative said:

...What recordkeeping (time wise, I guess?) does your student use to track hours (if you do this)? If you don't track it, how do you make notes to justify giving credit (assuming you aren't using one textbook such as with a subject like math)?

That's actually a combo of several questions.

For determining what "makes a credit" for a DIY course, you want to consider:
- did the student achieve the learning goals you set up [and were those goals of high school (or above) level to begin with]
- was the volume and rigor of material appropriate for high school (or above) credit
- and was the time spent on the material appropriate for high school (or above) credit

For record keeping, that will overlap somewhat with how you set up the course:
- hours? -- then set up a log sheet with check boxes
- output? -- quizzes, tests, short answers to in-text discussion questions, writing assignments, digital copy of student oral report, photo of physical project/lab/art creation/etc,
- discussion? -- note that in the course description document or your "school counselor" document for that course
- competition of textbook(s) and/or other resources? -- book list document
- participation in outside the home activities as part of the course? -- verification document from activity overseer; log of hours; student "report" or "journal" of the activity; etc.

So, for the example of our DIY History:
- spine: xxx # of pages from the spine text covering our time period
- supplement: excerpts from other print/web resources
- supplement: watching documentaries and/or teaching lectures
- supplement: several field trips to historical sites or museums
- main output: mostly discussion
- supplementary output: timeline entries (every other week, 10 entries, 1 short sentence each)
- supplementary output: 1 research paper
- supplementary output: occasional written short answers to in-textbook discussion questions
- time to do the above: about 4.5 hours/week = 150+ hours = 1 credit History

 

7 hours ago, cintinative said:

... ETA: new question:  Do you add "catch up days/weeks" to your schedule? 

No. But I mostly scheduled 4 day weeks, to allow for extracurriculars, sports involvement, and events with our homeschool support group. That 5th day of the week was short because of the support group, so that naturally allowed us to finish up anything from the 4-day schedule that hadn't been finished earlier in the week. That also made it much easier to get Science labs done in less stressful way, as 1-2 times/month we didn't have those outside activities and actually had a full 5 days in the week for homeschooling and catching up or working ahead.

Edited by Lori D.
  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My oldest dd is a fast reader, so I took how much time it took me & multiplied by 1.5. My next is much slower, so she needed x4 or x5. However, writing assignments that would take DD#1 well, forever, only take DD#2 a day to draft & a couple days to revise. In general, that meant that what took dd#1 into the summer to finish was done by February for DD#2. Also, DD#2 is pretty good about sticking to the hour/day per subject. Dd#1 wasn't. Know thy child!

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I only have two homemade high school courses under my belt, so take my input with a grain of salt. 

My high schooler reads fairly slowly and still is not great at estimating how long specific assignments will take her.  For the coming year's mom-made classes I made the syllabus, then revised it down by 1/4. She will still spend more than the required hours on the class. 

Also, I try to balance her classes in terms of difficulty and workload so that lighter ones make up for heavier ones. Everything does not have to be as challenging as possible to be a good class and a valuable learning experience. 

  • Like 6
Link to comment
Share on other sites

All of our classes are so different. Reading ahead- textbooks- I don't usually read too much of their actual texts. But I usually am reading something along the same lines to be able to go deep at least on some of the topics. Other times, I just ask what they read about that day, and discuss what we can about it. Strategies for reading ahead? I love to read, so that's not an issue. I carry a big tote bag with me everywhere with books and magazines that I am reading through. I take it to their dance classes and read while they're in class. I read in my chair in the backyard while little dd plays in the wading pool with the neighbors. I read for a few minutes here and there throughout the day while they are doing math problems (along with playing on here and chatting...) I have several books going at once. RIght now I am rereading a favorite book of mine because dd15 is doing a summer lit course online about it. I have read this one multiple times, but am enjoying it again to go over her lessons with her. But I also am reading a history book, an art curriculum for next year, and several magazines that I can just pick an article for, and some encouraging homeschool mom books that I like to read a bit from here and there. I need to add Well Trained Mind to the stack to reread the grammar stage soon.  But I do not read everything they read. I go deep on a couple books a year with them. Other times, they just read and tell me about it or do a report of some kind. Sometimes I use Cliff's Notes as PP said. 

Yes, I tend to overload at the beginning and then we get a flow going. I have a stack of lit books I 'd like them to get to. They pick and choose and we work our way through them- one or two a semester aloud together, one or two a semester on their own is how it usually works out, plus one or two over the summer. 

For record keeping I use the Well Planned Day's High School Four Year Plan books. I have always preferred pencil and paper planners. I use the day to day spaces to record what actually gets done. If I have one subject that I am truly tracking like read one chapter a week or whatever, I write those plans out on the monthly calendar spread so on Sunday, it's like a checklist for the week: Read chp. 1 of Spanish (and they know what else is included in that, like which exercises they are to do or whatever,) Turn in summary of >>>latest lit book>> and start >>> next lit book>>> and so forth.  For our more Great Books style classes, I don't put anything there. We just have allotted time frames during the day and we jot down in the planner what got accomplished. I sometimes have a plan for output like one history presentation and one short research paper first semester that they know about at the beginning of the semester that they are working on as we go that they can be thinking about which topics they want to research more deeply for on top of what they are reading, what we are reading aloud together, and films we are watching, and field trips we are taking.

And yes, I have learned to add catch up weeks to our schedule here and there, especially in the courses in which we really are trying to work through a specific textbook. (A lot of our classes aren't necessarily textbook,  but for the ones that are, this gives some breathing room.) 

 

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...