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Tests/Lesson Plans for "The Great American Story: A Land of Hope"?


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After seeing a recommendation for this course for American History, I purchased the text, Student Workbook, and Teacher's Guide. I'm impressed and look forward to using these books in conjunction with the videos. 

I see that there are quizzes available online associated with the videos, and questions in the Student Guide. At the risk of sounding greedy or that I'd like this course to be handed to me on a silver platter (ok, I would....), does anyone know if there are tests, a final exam, or lesson plans available yet for this course? I couldn't find them at the Hillsdale site, but wondered if perhaps some industrious homeschool parent had already located or created them. I can look at the work and break it down into lesson plans on my own, but if it's already out there, I'm grabbing it with both hands! Thanks for any pointers. 🙂

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  • 2 months later...

I'm in the same boat.  The best thing I can find is the k-12 1776 Curriculum at Hillsdale.  https://k12.hillsdale.edu/Curriculum/The-Hillsdale-1776-Curriculum/

The High School American History is the best info, but unfortunately, it's not laid out even weekly, and only about half of the book is scheduled.  It does look like the other units are scheduled to be released sometime this year.  A friend and I are hoping to take this plan and turn it into a 32 week curriculum, but we may need to wait until the other part is released.  I hope that's not too daunting of a task!

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I used the book and workbook for my daughters and some of the videos. I put together one test from workbook questions, then found that was too much work and devolved into just...assessing my kids based on discussion and preparation for class. I wish there was a test book!!

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1 hour ago, MagistraKennedy said:

There's a teacher's guide that mentions quizzes. 
https://amzn.to/3QOXqfN

Sadly, you can't look inside. Grr. 

 

Our kids took the (very easy if you listened to the videos) quizzes online. We did use the student book, and split the weekly homework questions into 3-4 "essay quiz" questions and the other 9-12 "verbal discussion" questions. The "essay quiz" questions were due in well-written, typed essay form at the start of weekly class meeting. 

Our students appreciated being allowed / encouraged to go down rabbit trails in group discussion, and I as teacher was quite comfortable counting the open-ended essays as weekly quiz grade. (The online quizzes were more reading checks, not truly thought-provoking concept questions.) All students also took both US History CLEP exams after our DIY-at-home style course, and passed both CLEPS with no problem (that wasn't the purpose of the course, but a little side benefit after the fact).

I did use the teacher's guide, but think the quizzes they refer to are the online ones? I can check my copy if you like.

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Just following up on Land of Hope. I was reluctant to give up on it, as it seems like an outstanding curriculum. I downloaded the Hillsdale 1776 Curriculum (thank you MaryV for the pointer!) and began laying out the lessons in Homeschool Planet. Some issues I encountered:

- Although recommended memory work, map work, and unit tests are provided, these aren't laid out in terms of lessons. I had to determine when these should be addressed in the lesson sequence.

- No answer keys are provided, either for "guided reading questions" or for the tests. I could locate this information for many of the fill in the blank questions or those covering areas I'm familiar with, however, this takes time and some of the more "deep dive" questions would require more research on my part. I called Hillsdale today to ask about the availability of an answer key. I talked to an impressively articulate current student working at the office, who let me know that they've received this feedback very recently from other parents as well and plan to address this moving forward. That likely won't be in time for us, but will help others.

- There's not a 1 to 1 correspondence between the Land of Hope Student Workbook and the 1776 Curriculum. 1776 provides some source documents that aren't in the Workbook, and also provides some that aren't referenced in the lessons. I'm viewing this as a buffet (to borrow from another curriculum provider) of materials that could be used in lessons. The Workbook questions in each chapter also differ from "guided reading questions" in the 1776 Curriculum. This is a positive in that there are a lot of ways to implement this curriculum, but perhaps also a challenge for homeschoolers in that it's far from "open and go". 

I plan to forge ahead and use the 1776 plans as provided to the best of my ability. I will give the tests open book as there's not an answer key, and have DD view the video lectures as well. I favor using the 1776 PDF over solely the Student Workbook as it includes a greater number of source documents and the associated questions look excellent. Although it will be a bit of work on my part, I think this will be a far more engaging course than the traditional somewhat sterile American History course. 

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Land of Hope does have a teacher's guide that provides excellent summaries and answers to all of the questions from the Student Workbook. It's independent of the 1776 plans, but did work out quite well for our Land of Hope history year. 🙂 (We used video lectures + textbook + student book + teacher book + 2 CLEP exams.) Just in case that's helpful to anyone else interested in Land of Hope. 🙂

Edited by Lucy the Valiant
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