Homeschool Connections Seminars on Writing

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking to a couple groups of people about writing. I love speaking to groups (which amazes me since I hated it in school).

The first group of about ten homeschooling moms showed up for my morning talk on Evaluating Your Child's Writing. Most of the moms had elementary and junior high students. We settled in for a cozy chat on how to instruct their children in writing and assess the progress.

Later I spoke to a larger group of about 25-30 people, including some dads and teens, about writing a high scoring ACT essay. This information was distilled from my six-hour essay writing workshop, so I talked fast in order to include everything I wanted to say. I finished with one minute for questions. :-)

I felt really encouraged after speaking to these eager and diligent homeschool parents. I am confident that they left with more tools in their writing toolbox.

If you came here looking for the handouts to these seminars, here's a dropbox link.

Planning a High School English Credit

What constitutes a high school credit and what can be used to meet credit requirements? Several conversations I've heard have led me to believe that many homeschooling moms are unaware of how to meet high school graduation requirements in general and for English classes in particular.  

Below is some information on how to decide what goes into a high school credit. But keep in mind that learning doesn't have to look a certain way to be education (or credits).

HSLDA offers this information about how much work should be included: 
"For courses that do not use a standard high school-level textbook (perhaps you are putting together your own unit study, or you are using an integrated curriculum), log the hours that your child spends completing the course work. One credit is approximately 120-180 hours of work. The upper end of this range (180 hours) is usually
appropriate for lab science courses, while 150 hours is the average for a year long academic course such as English or History. Don't become legalistic in keeping track of each minute, but generally, when evaluating credit for an academic course, a good rule of thumb is 50 minutes a day, 5 days a week for 36 weeks, for a one-credit course. Logging hours is a good method of determining credit for elective courses such as art, music, sewing, carpentry, web page design, etc. The lower end of the range (120 hours) is fine for elective courses. For a half-credit elective, log approximately 60 hours; for a quarter-credit elective, log approximately 30 hours."

Let's take English for example, since I teach writing classes and moms often ask me about how to earn an English credit. A high school English credit should include writing, reading, listening, and speaking. Stated another way, I would include composition, literature, vocabulary, and oral language skills. Some other skills to consider are: literary interpretation,  the vocabulary and analysis of poetry, cross-cultural literature, and the analysis of plays, just to mention a few.

A nice outline of 4 high school English classes can be found here (grades 9-10) and here (grades 11-12). For my Michigan readers, you can peruse the Michigan Curriculum Framework to see what the Department of Education has chosen as goals for students of various ages. Specific Course/Credit Requirements for Michigan high schools have also been put together for each high school grade. Other states have similar documents which you can find online. However, for the homeschool student, I would consider these as a framework. For the parent who doesn't know what to do, these course requirements can give you a clear idea of what is ideally taught in Michigan high school English classes. 

The key to remember is that YOU are the one who gets to decide what your student takes. You can choose what counts for the class. You give the grades, you write the transcript, etc... As I said before, learning does not have to look a certain way. Homeschooling gives us the freedom to decide what to teach. 

Now for some specifics... I will list some practical ways a British Literature class I co-taught at our local homeschool co-op could have been used to earn a high school English credit. You can use this same method to help you figure out credits for any high school class.

Remember that HSLDA recommends about 150 hours for an English class? Let's see if we can come close to 150 hours with our Brit Lit class.

We assigned five novels to be read outside of class time. Audiobooks of the novels total about 58 hours. (By the way, free classic audiobooks are available copyright-free at librivox.org, and I highly recommend audiobooks for those who prefer other activities to reading.) Some may read faster or slower, but the audiobook length gives me an appropriate number to decide how long a student might take to read the selection. 

Each student also completed a poetry mini-report which I estimated would take about 3 hours to prepare. Students gave their reports in front of the class (fulfilling the oral language portion of the English requirement). 

Our class met for 14 hours in class and  we also met for 15 or so hours to watch and discuss the film adaptations of the novels. That brings us to 90 hours already just with the class as planned, more than enough for a half-credit class. I would consider this the literature portion of the class, keeping in mind that a full English credit should also include composition, vocabulary study, and oral language skills. 

So, what else can students do for the remaining hours for a full credit? I would recommend a large quantity of writing, also known as composition. Writing, writing, and more writing! If a student wrote an assignment for each of the five novels and spent three hours working on each one, that's another 15 hours. I would consider it important to also assign at least one longer paper or project that should take much longer to complete, but 3 hours per paper is a probable estimate for an essay. 

The class traveled to experience a Shakespeare play performed at a university. We also put together an end-of-the-year presentation for our co-op program (another oral language component). This added at least 10 more hours to the total.

What else can be included? How about 6 hours working on vocabulary and 6 hours studying for tests? We offered one optional novel inc lass that could include another 11 hours of reading time. Since our co-op only meets September through early April, my own children will continue their lessons through late May, so I assign them one or two more books to be completed on their own. That brings us to 138 hours, leaving 12 hours for you to fill as you like. 

The remaining hours could be used for review, study, further reading or writing, or a research paper, depending on your desires. Keeping a reading journal is a good idea! Some other possibilities could include vocabulary quizzes, more writing topics, tests, viewing another performance, and any other appropriate activities, each to be evaluated by you. 

By the way, it is definitely acceptable to list your student's high school English classes simply as English 9, English 10, etc... on his transcript. Public high schools commonly list credits that way. You can also list the courses by content if you prefer, such as American Literature and Composition, World Literature and Composition, British Literature and Composition, Creative Writing, etc...


If this information has helped you, please leave a comment as to what specifically was helpful. If you have any questions, I would be glad to try to answer them as well.

To Grade or Not to Grade....

To grade or not to grade, that is the question. (Apologies to Shakespeare!)

Maybe that's not the only question, but it is one that I needed to address recently. A new homeschooling friend asked me, "How do you grade?"

So, here goes nothing! Some of you might be shocked; some may be relieved. Some might even agree! But let me add my disclaimer: My own way of homeschooling is not the only right way. Other people find different styles that work well for them. What I describe here is what has worked well for us.

So, to answer my friend's question about grading - I really don't do any. I don't keep a grade book. I don't grade their daily work. I don't grade tests. (In fact, I don't even give tests. But that's a post for another day, I think.) 

Once upon a time, I thought I would keep grades. But, the futility and purposelessness of it nagged at me when my children were in elementary school. So I told myself, "Well, I will keep grades for middle school." However, middle school came and went, high school began, and suddenly my oldest is a senior. He will graduate in 4 months and we still don't keep grades, at least not in the way most schools do.

For math, we use Teaching Textbooks, a computer-based program that automatically grades the work. If they get less than 80% correct, I require them to do the entire lesson over. If they get between 80-100%, I consider that lesson complete and the student moves on. At the end of a year, I don't give them a letter grade in math. In fact, their math books don't usually begin or end according to the parameters of a school year. In addition, my senior is doing Pre-Calculus, which doesn't come with the automatic grading feature. So, my senior grades his own math. Believe it or not, he has the answer book and uses it appropriately.

Other than math, I don't give many letter grades at all, not even for the writing classes that I teach. Why not?

One question I asked myself is why would I model my own teaching methods on those used by traditional schools when I've chosen to keep my children out of school? Grades are a fairly recent invention in the history of humankind, though learning has been going on for all those centuries. Do you think Jane Austen got a daily penmanship grade? Do you think Thomas Jefferson got a reading quiz score every day? Do you think Socrates was graded on his debate skills? 

Additionally, I see very little value in grades the way that they are commonly used. The reason teachers keep grades is so they know how a student is doing in a subject. If a teacher has 25 children to keep track of, is she going to remember that Mabel needs to work on capitalization and Jared should practice the comma rules? Will she recall which students need extra math practice after the chapter test? No. She needs some way to keep track. Thus, record-keeping was introduced. 

However, I *do* know that one of my kids needs to work on differentiating the words that begin with "th" and that another kid will tend not to complete the day's work unless reminded, and which of my children needs to practice math facts. I don't need the numbers in the little squares to remind me. The numbers (or letters) are just symbols of the things that are mastered or still need to be mastered. 

Grades are a time-waster for the homeschool mom. I was a teacher in a school way back when. My duties included an inordinate amount of attention to my grade book and hours and hours filling in those pesky little squares and adding up numbers to complete report cards - wish I could get those hours back! Now I certainly don't have time in my busy schedule to count up picky little points and average them all out, even now that computer grade books do it for you. (Yeah, back in the early 90's, I did that with a calculator. LOL)

One more thing to consider is that every teacher grades differently. I could write quite a bit on how subjective grading really is - in public schools, in private schools, and in home schools, but I'll let that alone for now.  

Most of all, I just don't think grades are an accurate picture of my children's academic work. My senior is more than an A in Pre-Calculus and a C in Spanish 1. 

So, what do I do instead?

Usually if a page is done well, I will simply say, "Good job! You're all set!" He or she may ask for a star or an "A" written on the page which I gladly give. At any rate, I think comments, both spoken and written, are so much more meaningful than a percent score. Maybe you remember getting a paper back with an unexpected poor grade and wondering why. But if no comments were given, you had no way to know. Or perhaps, you worked especially hard on an assignment and the letter grade gave no indication of whether the teacher noticed your hard work. 

In the writing classes I teach, I write a lot of comments on my students' papers. I want them to read them, learn from them, and use them, rather than just look at the large red "C" scribbled at the top of their carefully-written essay and wonder why it's not an "A" as they toss the paper in the wastepaper bin.

So, for all these reasons, I don't make letter grades or percentages a focus in our education.

Do we assess learning? Yes.
Do I know what they need to work on? Yes.
Do the kids have to re-do poorly done work? Yes.
Do I give feedback? Yes.
Do they know when they have success? Yes.

And that's what it's about, here at Cornerstone Home Learning.