shanvan Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 My son is doing some dialectic with a few upper grammar readings. I do other subjects besides TOG in the afternoons. I have three questions about how to handle reading assignments... 1. About how much time do you allow for them to read their assignments before moving on to lessons and subject matter that you teach to them? 2. Do you set a specific time alloted for individual reading and then have them finish whatever is left as homework? 3. Do you assign all of the weeks reading to be done Monday (possibly Tues) or spread it out over the week a little more? The problem is that some subjects are done together and my dd and I are stuck waiting for my ds to finish. Any thoughts? Shannon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wendy in ME Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 We are currently spreading the reading out over the week. We do our core subjects in the morning and read alouds and literature in the evening. He does his independent assigned reading after lunch and takes as long as he needs to get it done then he works on another TOG assignment such as mapping or timeline. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choirfarm Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 We have a conference on Monday and I give them a sheet like this: Week 3 Islam, Muslim beliefs History Story of Europe pp. 32-44 Arabs in the Golden Age Byzantine Empire LTH Usborne Medieval World may be helpful Hands-on Make a Mosque Timeline Attach figures to your timeline Literature Beowulf part 2 with worksheet Church History Brian: The Church in History ch 7 & 8 J- Trial and Triumph 8 & 9 Writing Work on your editing skills. Your two papers are due by Friday I also give them their questions, worksheets, maps, etc. We really stretched out the first unit, but we are doing 2 weeks at a time in unit 3 now since we already studied this time period. Anyway, They generally are to turn in all history written work: questions, maps, timelines by Thursday afternoon so I can grade them that night. Then Friday morning we have our discussion. They finish up literature on Friday and give me to grade and discuss in the afternoon. Occasionally they have to finish up timeline or map work on Fridays. I have a 2 hour block in the morning that is TOG and that includes writing work. They figure out the time itself. I'm not sure what you mean by some subjects are done together..TOG or science or??? Like I said, I have a 2 hour block in the morning, but the only thing I do is conference with them and give them instuction on Monday morning ( 20 minutes) and then discussion on Friday (one hour). The rest of the time is entirely on their own. Christine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elinor Everywhere Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 We have a conference on Monday and I give them a sheet like this: Week 3 Islam, Muslim beliefs History Story of Europe pp. 32-44 Arabs in the Golden Age Byzantine Empire LTH Usborne Medieval World may be helpful Hands-on Make a Mosque Timeline Attach figures to your timeline Literature Beowulf part 2 with worksheet Church History Brian: The Church in History ch 7 & 8 J- Trial and Triumph 8 & 9 Writing Work on your editing skills. Your two papers are due by Friday I also give them their questions, worksheets, maps, etc. We really stretched out the first unit, but we are doing 2 weeks at a time in unit 3 now since we already studied this time period. Anyway, They generally are to turn in all history written work: questions, maps, timelines by Thursday afternoon so I can grade them that night. Then Friday morning we have our discussion. They finish up literature on Friday and give me to grade and discuss in the afternoon. Occasionally they have to finish up timeline or map work on Fridays. I have a 2 hour block in the morning that is TOG and that includes writing work. They figure out the time itself. I'm not sure what you mean by some subjects are done together..TOG or science or??? Like I said, I have a 2 hour block in the morning, but the only thing I do is conference with them and give them instuction on Monday morning ( 20 minutes) and then discussion on Friday (one hour). The rest of the time is entirely on their own. Christine Christine, This is very helpful! We are starting Year 2 of TOG (and it's also our second year), and right now I am breaking everything down on their individual schedules, but I like your sheet - much simpler. My one concern is that they are not too good at spreading the work out themselves, which is why I'm doing it for them. Particularly my son (Upper Grammar); he would have a hard time with this. But....I like it. Hmmmm. Thanks for giving me something to chew on! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siloam Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 Shannon, My oldest prefers to read a little bit every day, so that is the way we do it. She also will sometimes finish up in the evening before she goes to bed (mostly literature there). There will also be a huge gap between the amount of work I can schedule for my oldest and my 2nd dd. The first is a serious reader and carries a heavy schedule, the second is more hands on and is a slow reader. She will at the same age, do half or less of what her sister does. Point being, that maybe back things off a bit for him. I don't know what load he is carrying to begin with, but if you are having him do the in-depth work, by all means drop it, KWIM? If not then maybe he does just need to do a little each day. Heather Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hollyhillhomeschool Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 I could probably write for hours on this one topic. Thanks for broaching it. I have been teaching TOG since 3rd or 4th grade for my ds, who is now going into 9th grade next year. We have gone through each time period, some twice. In dialectic some of the reads are in fact the same as upper grammar. I started to question the frenzied pace we were taking to try to go through the entire reading list (which we had done the previous years.) So this year (his 8th) I began to pick 5-6 big titles that I thought were very valuable (some from rhetoric list, some from dialectic, depending on content) and we went slower this time. I assign reading and topic for the TOG week on Monday morning. The kids have 1 full week and a weekend to read the assignment. The next Monday we have our discussion. If the book is quite long, they might have 2 or 3 weeks--like Don Quixote's 938 pages. In this discussion we try to cover the basic TOG questions, but then I try to use lit/IEW Teaching Classics socratic method with the literature. Sometimes I choose just one literary element to cover. For example, Don Quixote we covered basic plot, characters, but the focus was on Theme and conflict. Then we had a writing assignment on how Cervantes explored the theme through the novel. Not more than a 3-4 paragraph essay. But this way we covered lit analysis, some more in-depth discussion than just racing through the book, and incorporated our once-learned IEW skills into more thinking writing skills. I assigned this to my 6th grade dd as well, but of course expected less, and mentored more. It took me awhile to realize that we were racing, racing, racing, but never really applying much in-depth analysis time to the things we were reading. While I want them to have a broad exposure to world lit, etc., ultimately I want them to have the ability to analyze, comprehend, and be able to process/communicate back what they have discovered in lit. Having already gone through the TOG round for each year at least once, I convinced myself to change the pace. TOG 2 this year we read in depth: edited (very edited) selections of Canterbury Tales (covered lit elements of setting for one of the tales, characters for one of the other ones), Thomas a Kempis Imitation of Christ, Utopia (we didn't cover this the way we could have), Machiavelli's The Prince (fantastic--boy, I enjoyed this so much!), Don Quixote (theme development), 95 Theses (analysis, comprehension), just several cantos of Spenser's Faerie Queene--too much would have been too much!:lol:, and many of the more easier to read stuff in the dialectic column. I think I am forgetting some of the books...but you get the idea!;) Although I use TOG and like it, I do think that it encourages more exposure and less depth. Ultimately, my personal educational goal for our dd and ds would be that they can think, analyze, articulate. In reality, this is all not as fantastically organized as I would like, and I could always do better (particularly with 2 year old dd under foot) but I feel much more satisfied about the way we are studying this year. Any one else have thoughts on trying this approach? Any good lit books to cover this kind of lit elements analysis in combination with TOG? I have been piecing together Teaching Classics IEW, Stobaugh's Lit (wow...wouldn't have bought it if I had read the boards beforehand...but it is in the cabinet, so I use what I can), and might get Windows on the World. Thanks for this thread...it is very very helpful to discuss these issues...:iagree: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
siloam Posted April 20, 2009 Share Posted April 20, 2009 (edited) Actually I go more slowly through TOG for this exact reason. I have some weeks that take us 4 weeks to finish, though that is not the norm. It is not unusual for a week to take us 1.5 to 2 weeks though. Heather Edited April 21, 2009 by siloam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HappyGrace Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 I have been planning for yrs to do TOG starting in 5th-HollyHill, that was such a timely post for me right now as I'm examining the depth vs. breadth question for this coming year (4th grade) and as I'm starting to acquire books for TOG 1 in 5th. Thanks for the food for thought on a topic I've been playing with in my head a lot lately-you put into words so well what I've been pondering. It helps to hear from someone who has btdt! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WTMindy Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 My kids are pretty strong readers and I haven't yet found the pace to overwhelming, but we are not in rhetoric yet. Here is what we do. On Monday I give them their reading assignments for the week (I have one D and one UG). Monday afternoon I spend quite a long time reading outloud to them. I read to them all the church history/worldview books ,for both levels. Sometimes there is some overlap. I also read the fine arts stuff and usually I throw SOTW in there because we loved it and I think it is great. This takes a couple hours and the kids color their timeline figures (or other projects) while I read. They are responsible to read the history core, in depth and literature on their own by Friday and do the lit worksheets and history questions by Friday. They have done a pretty good job getting their work done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
profmom Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 My son is doing some dialectic with a few upper grammar readings. I do other subjects besides TOG in the afternoons. I have three questions about how to handle reading assignments... 1. About how much time do you allow for them to read their assignments before moving on to lessons and subject matter that you teach to them? 2. Do you set a specific time alloted for individual reading and then have them finish whatever is left as homework? 3. Do you assign all of the weeks reading to be done Monday (possibly Tues) or spread it out over the week a little more? The problem is that some subjects are done together and my dd and I are stuck waiting for my ds to finish. Any thoughts? Shannon Shannon, I'm not sure how long my kids are spending reading, but we do schedule the reading over the week. My 4th grader likes to schedule his work by taking each assignment and dividing it by 4 days -- a little bit in each book each day. (We scheduled together at the beginning of the year and then he took over as soon as he could.) My 6th grader schedules her reading by spreading the books out over the week -- starting and finishing one book's assignment before opening a new one. We do our core subjects in the morning and reading in the afternoon. If you are waiting on your ds, maybe you could move his schedule around a little? We do most of our "together" subjects first thing in the morning. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mama Lynx Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 I give my kids a list. Ideally, I give it to them on Friiday, so that they have the weekend to read; often, though I give it to them Monday morning. They may schedule it however they like, as long as they're finished by Friday morning. My 11 year old, who is reading some UG/some D, needs more structure, so I break his readings down and tell him what to read every day. He probably spends an hour reading history each week - he's a slower reader and history is not his thing, so I don't assign him everything. My 13 year old loves history and reads quickly, and probably spends 3 hours a week reading history. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staci in MO Posted April 21, 2009 Share Posted April 21, 2009 I give the assignments on Monday. I break it down into daily chunks for them, but I hope to shift that responsibility to them this fall. All reading needs to be done by Friday afternoon, when we have our discussion. Some weeks have more than others, but I would guess that my dialectic level ds spends about thirty minutes a day or less reading history. I've played around with alternate assignments versus recommended books, in-depth versus no in-depth, etc., and have finally decided that even though reading the core and the in-depth reading may take a little more time, my ds ENJOYS that reading time much more than when I tried to use the textbooks recommended in the alternate list. Thirty minutes reading an interesting book is better to him than spending fifteen minutes slogging through a textbook he doesn't enjoy. If we were doing the TOG writing, it would be more important to finish the reading earlier in the week. Some people have solved this problem by shifting the due dates for the writing assignments to the following week. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shanvan Posted April 21, 2009 Author Share Posted April 21, 2009 I haven’t had time to respond to the excellent advice in theses posts until now. Yesterday was dentist appointments, today Spanish class and 4H! I think I will probably move the TOG reading to the afternoon as several of you have suggested and spread it out through the week. I hesitated to do so because math is scheduled in the afternoon and is basically an independent subject for ds. In thinking it over, it should work well and free me up a little in the afternoon which is when I am at my worst and fading fast. I’m not sure how I’ll handle writing assignments yet. I am going to try to follow the Tapestry writing assignments. If you’ve read any of my previous posts you’ll know that I was pretty much designing my own Tapestry like approach using the library. I think TOG is going to be a great fit for us because it will relieve me of the exhaustive planning I was doing completely on my own. It seems strange for me to be saying that the TOG planning is a break for me, but it is. It’s a relief to me that all I have to do is pick from all that wonderful material that is right in front of me! We have covered a lot of unit 1info (before TOG) already this year, but I am using it as a sort of fast review doing assignments of things we may not have touched on as thoroughly. This is allowing us to get a feel for Tapestry and transition into it gradually. We have just started with TOG 1, so I am still figuring out the scheduling. I like the way you schedule Christine, but my ds isn’t ready to be that independent yet. I need to work at handing over the reins more gradually, as Staci is doing. Even as ds takes over more responsibility for his work, some things I know I will want to have a mini lesson on before he goes off to work on his own - - especially in the area of writing assignments. Thank you for bringing up the breadth vs depth issue, Hollyhill. This is an issue I have become well acquainted with during the past year or so. I have finally come to the conclusion that we all (at my house) learn better if we examine our work thoroughly and move more slowly. It took me quite a while to come to that conclusion. There are so many homeschoolers in my acquaintance who seem to be running a race to fit in as much as possible. We have opted to take the pressure off so we can enjoy and digest what we learn. Heather, I’ve read lots of your posts about TOG...just wanted you to know they have been very helpful. Because of our decision to slow down the learning a little, I was always happy to read about how you are doing the same. Thanks again to all for the helpful responses. I’m sure I’ll have more questions as we transition into TOG. It’s wonderful to know you are all just a post away and full of wise words and encouragement. Shannon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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