What is "normal" for 9th grade history?

[Porridge]

What is a "normal" or "average" workload for a 9th grade history course?

Is it normal to expect students to write papers? Papers of what length?

Do most classes involve reading + quizzes? Projects? How much reading? How many projects?

I realize the answer may be that there is no "normal," as classes can vary widely. I'm just trying to get a general sense.

X posted to High school board

[prairiewindmomma]

In public school my kids write a 3-5 page researched paper per semester, give a couple of slide shows on assigned topics, and do some notebooking activities. 
 

With my homeschooled kid, we combined ancient literature with History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer. We used about 90% of the accompanying workbook. Our ancient lit picks were the usual—Iliad, Odyssey, Aenid, Epic of Gilgamesh, Herotodus, The Republic, etc. 

If I were to do it again, I’d scale back a bit on the literature. It was overly ambitious and more college level than high school level.

[Laura Corin]

gcse-history-paper-1-specimen-papers_Warfare and B_240401_221250.PDF9th grade in the UK would be preparing for the GSCE exams. That requires writing essays in exam conditions as well as shorter answers, normally at age 16. So the pupils would be writing lots of essays to practise. Here's an exam paper.

 

Edited April 1 by Laura Corin

[QueenCat]

41 minutes ago, Porridge said:

What is a "normal" or "average" workload for a 9th grade history course?

Is it normal to expect students to write papers? Papers of what length?

Do most classes involve reading + quizzes? Projects? How much reading? How many projects?

I realize the answer may be that there is no "normal," as classes can vary widely. I'm just trying to get a general sense.

X posted to High school board

I would expect all of the above. Papers, lots of reading, quizzes, and projects. In class, lectures based on reading, some project & paper time, but some would need to be done at home. All reading done at home.

Edited April 1 by QueenCat

[prairiewindmomma]

Fwiw, the short answer and essay prompts in the workbook mentioned above are stellar. Oldest really mastered short answer and essay writing using those.

[Porridge]

10 minutes ago, prairiewindmomma said:

Fwiw, the short answer and essay prompts in the workbook mentioned above are stellar. Oldest really mastered short answer and essay writing using those.

Did you have them so every short answer Q for each chapter?

[ScoutTN]

Idk that there is” normal”.
 

My then 9th grader read from a text, primary sources, and some literature. We discussed several times a week, she answered/wrote a couple short answer questions most weeks and wrote a 5 page paper each semester. We tried to keep it to 5-7 hours/week. 

Edited April 2 by ScoutTN

[prairiewindmomma]

2 hours ago, Porridge said:

Did you have them so every short answer Q for each chapter?

It depended on his overall workload for the week. He usually did all of the top half of the assignment, but sometimes we chose to do only some of the prompts/questions. 

[desertflower]

18 hours ago, ScoutTN said:

My then 9th grader read from a text, primary sources, and some literature. We discussed several times a week, she answered/wrote a couple short answer questions most weeks and wrote a 5 page paper each semester. We tried to keep it to 5-7 hours/week. 

Where did you get your ideas for the paper? I’m going to use Sonlight (never used before) and not sure they will have ideas for the kids to write a paper. 

[ScoutTN]

2 hours ago, desertflower said:

Where did you get your ideas for the paper? I’m going to use Sonlight (never used before) and not sure they will have ideas for the kids to write a paper. 

Dd had some from her reading and we discussed options. She did a bit of looking for source materials and then chose. 
 

She was studying modernity, so a world history survey, Renaissance to now. We used a mishmash of Dave Raymond’s Modernity, K12 Human Odyssey texts, and some Hillsdale lectures.

Five pages is not too long, so the hardest part was narrowing her topics. 

[desertflower]

Thanks! 

[Janeway]

Our local public schools do some sort of geography during this year. Regular level students just do multiple choice tests and that is about it. Then there is preAP World Geography and AP Human geo.  The higher level courses have more going on, but not always. It depends on the teacher. I knew a preAP precal teacher that only did multiple choice tests, using a scantron that she ran through the little machine on her desk. AP Human Geo kids will usually have projects and such.

[historically accurate]

My kids used various levels of BYL for 9th grade (level 8, level 7, and level 10) depending on where they/their siblings were in history.

Lots of reading.

Weekly 1 page report on a topic that caught their interest. 1-2 longer reports per year, 3-5 pages. 

No quizzes. No tests. We discussed, and they narrated.

Two of the kids did the narration cards from BYL as projects, about 5 or 6 a year (not quite monthly).

 

[Pam in CT]

My 3 kids went to 3 different private high schools. All of them regularly wrote 3-5 page papers in 9th grade history; one of them had to write one a week. They all also did regular presentations, sometimes in a small group and other times alone.