4Real Forums: ? Re: Kolbe 12th grade courses

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High School Years and Beyond ( Forum Locked)
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Topic: ? Re: Kolbe 12th grade courses

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time4tea
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Joined: June 02 2005
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Posted: May 14 2010 at 1:00pm \| IP Logged

Hi!

Dh and I are very seriously considering enrolling our ds in 3 Kolbe courses for next year (he will be a 12th grader). We are thinking of Literature, English and History (we do Didache for Theology). Have any of you had students complete any of these courses and if so, what was your impressions of the coursework? We are considering using the Enhanced Evaluation Service as well, so any feedback about that would also be much appreciated!

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ALmom
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Posted: May 17 2010 at 11:26pm \| IP Logged

We have done some of these - generally signed up with EES for our highschoolers. The best thing with EES is that we can have our child submit whatever we want for evaluation in those 12 papers.

We have had very, very positive results from EES. Communicate well with them about what you want and need from them, and our experience has been that they really do deliver. My 2 who have done EES so far, have both found it to be a great help. One was a strong writer. One was a struggling writer. If the evaluator fit doesn't work after a reasonable trial, request a different one. This isn't something we have needed to do, but it is something to keep in mind. You do have that right. Oh, and the turn around time has generally been prompt. Once or twice, they have taken longer than expected (not more than a week is the promise) and I called. There are some crunch times and growing pains with the service - but they have been very good. One evaluator has my child turn in a paper every week - (we broke it down since this was a struggling writer - so initially it was outline, then first paragraph, then final paper until we noticed that we no longer needed so much guidance - then it is just the paper). Another child, we had them turn in papers from a variety of subjects - some things from Kolbe plans, some from my own plans. My children have loved this part of the whole Kolbe package. You do have to be enrolled full time with Kolbe in order to receive EES. Of course, the advantage to that is that you can pick and choose lesson plans from all 4 years, even a semester at a time, I think. There are some things we don't do from their plan.

We found the 9th and 10th grade English not so helpful. We did quarters of literature from both of those years. But 11th and 12th English are good courses (one is poetry and the other is short stories)

Also if you are planning to do Literature - the 11th grade year is one of my favorite, they have added more really good Catholic literature into the mix so I think it is a better balance than before and you have a lot of really good, deep thinking type essay possibilities. Of course it depends on what literature you actually want to cover. They have a lot more material now to support the teaching parent - audio tapes, lectures, notes on historical context and author, etc.

The history, it depends on what you are looking for. I have yet to do it in entirety though we get the plans and use parts. They do a better job in the plans now of helping place things in the bigger context. They do tend to focus more on the controversial or the things that are not handled well anywhere else. The end result is that you get a snippet. Also, the history by itself without the church history in the theology is not quite complete. These 2 really do complement each other. If you already have a really good overview of history, this can be very, very good as the questions are thought provoking. You are reading really worthy material and digging into primary sources - church and secular.

The reading level is quite high - both in terms of level of difficulty and sheer quantity. Don't overwhelm yourself doing everything. Try to pick and choose. We did a lot of jotting down lists in lieux of writing whole papers when I wanted them to grapple with some of the ideas without going through the whole process of a paper. In general, Kolbe plans have a paper each week in each of the following subjects:
theology, literature, history. Also paper topics will typically go across disciplines - so you might have a history paper topic that asks you to compare world views of someone you read in a previous year in history with someone you are reading now in theology and such. They do have booklets now with quizzes, questions, etc. We didn't use these a whole lot and only some of the tests. (Some we had to modify since we were skipping some of the material and combining some of our own stuff in).

The plans do come with paper topic bullets so you get an idea of what the lesson plan authors hoped they'd pick up out of the material and it gives you a clue as to why they have chosen certain works and what they are doing with them.

Do consider content of work read and think about your own child's readiness. With a 12th grader it may not be as much of a concern, but there are sometimes content things that I think is healthier if my children wait until later to read.

If you have specific questions about specific courses or items, you can PM me. I have plans for most of these things.

Janet

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