Today began our sophomore year, and I must say it went very well. This year I decided to go with a more structured school day to help maintain focus (both on her part and on mine). She was raring to go, and while it took a bit for me to get back into the swing of things, by midday I was fine.
Now, we do things a little different than a traditional school - other than the usual homeschool experience. Even though her alarm is set for 7:30, we don't start classes until 10:00. This leaves us plenty of time for breakfast, exercise and errands. (You'd be surprised how much quicker we get through the library and store while no one else is there.) Then we have classes until noon, an hour for lunch, then classes until 5:00. Today the schedule went well, but that's one of the beauties of homeschool. If the schedule doesn't work, we can adapt. As long as we're getting in the required number of hours in the required classes, we can be flexible within our structure.
Since we just got back the results from last spring's standardized tests, I tailored this semester to addressing those issues she didn't do as well on. So, with that in mind, one of the things I'll be focusing on is what Colorado likes to call Extended Writing. To that end, today I took a prompt from last year's SAT test (which is available online if anyone is interested) and gave her an hour to write a short essay on her choice of the three prompts. Another thing that she got lower scores on was Algebra. I'm not too worried about this since last year we devoted our attention to Geometry, and didn't do much Algebra until the end of the year (after the tests were administered). This year, to avoid that problem, I'll probably do switch off from one discipline to the other each term. That will give her two terms of Algebra and one of Geometry before the tests in March. =o)
One slight change from the stated course list I gave in my last post. After some discussion we decided to double up on the Geology this term, and switch to double Physics next term. Two hours straight of one science, I think, will be easier to retain than switching from one to the other. As long as we get them both in during this semester, we'll be fine for the spring science tests. (And the SATs she'll be taking in a couple years.)
So far, so good. I'll try and update this more often as things arise. How is your school experience going this year? If you haven't started yet, what do you have planned for this year?
Monday, August 18, 2008
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3 comments:
We just had our yearly evaluation for both kids this week.
We have it SO good in Florida compared to many other states. No required numbers of hours, which is kind of silly anyway given you can pack so much more in to a shorter amount of time when you're teaching one-on-one.
No required ciriculum. No required set of classes. No mandatory standardized testing. We could choose to use standardized testing for our yearly check-in. But Florida also has the option of getting an evaluation done by a Florida certified teacher. That's the route we use.
Our "school" tends to run year-round with a number of breaks here and there. So we are just gearing up for the upcoming year. We've gotten some supplies, but will probably need a few more books.
If you happen to have any good recommendations for materials on middle-school level biology, I'd be glad to hear about them.
Colorado has that option, too, but I don't have a high enough opinion of the teachers here to let any of them evaluate her. The tests aren't that great, but they do the job, and they're consistent.
I never did find a good middle-school biology text. Most of them are classic 'short attention span theatre' pieces. Instead I used a combo of older texts and internet sites. I'll put something together and get it out to you, Janime - either here or via email.
Great! Thanks!
And about the teacher evaluation in Florida. There is no set thing the teacher has to do. The statute says something along the lines of evaluating that the child is "progressing at a level commiserate with their ability".
We go to a teacher who is also a homeschooling mom, so things have always gone very, very smoothly.
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