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teachingmyown
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| Posted: Oct 24 2006 at 11:27pm | IP Logged
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Thanks Janet. You have been very helpful.
I actually have total freedom as regards to his schooling and transcripts. In VA, we can file religious exemption and not be bothered with. I just want to make sure that we cover everything and I need the support of a program, especially when it comes to grading.
That said, I have heard the same thing about Seton and the lack of real feedback that you mentioned. So far, he has only turned in tests, but they do not tell him why they took off credit, they just give a grade. He has a book analysis to turn in this week and I am worried it won't pass their standards. I don't feel confident enough to really judge it.
I would much prefer to work with someone who would give us detailed feedback. Isn't that the point of homeschooling- to work at something until it is mastered rather than turn something in for a grade and move on even if you bombed it?
The science sounds interesting. Thanks for taking the time.
__________________
In Christ,
Molly
wife to Court & mom to ds '91, dd '96, ds '97, dds '99, '01, '03, '06, and dss '07 and 01/20/11
Remembering Today
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ALmom
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| Posted: Oct 25 2006 at 11:38am | IP Logged
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Molly,
I know what you mean. I seemed to be forever on the phone with Seton trying to figure out what we needed to change and there were some history tests that I never could figure out why something had been marked off. I wanted our dd to learn from her mistakes - some of the things still in my memory are the things I missed on tests. Anyways, we were often left dangling and for my dd and I, this was immensely frustrating and stressful.
I finally realized that Seton, as nice as their counselors were, simply had a different vision of how things should work and we weren't a good match. The reason they do not give specific feedback, was because the student could re-take the test for a better grade - and any help, they felt was cheating. I am not a big grade freak and tend to do without 'till high school. Kolbe is not fixated on grades (they let the parents decide how to use all their input, how to weight things, etc.) We also found that any additional reading in Seton could actually mess you up, because they only wanted what was in Anne Carrol's text for the test. I felt my dd was learning to play games (her history test answers were memorized from Anne Carrol and full of slang to sound like the enthusiastic "dude" on the message board that the history teacher seemed to really like.) Sometimes, when we asked questions, we were told not to worry, it wasn't on the test. All this drove me nuts and was why my dd was stressed (she was actually getting A's but feeling totally dumb). Anyways, Kolbe has been a better fit for us. We feel a flexibility in the areas where we needed it, a flexibility we didn't have with Seton.
I was very, very impressed with the Kolbe feedback. It was specific, yet did not re-do the paper for her, but did give her some examples. We also have the assurance that the same person will be reviewing her papers - not an endless list of folks going by a checklist. They were quick to catch some sentences that were not very clear, and said so, telling her to rephrase this particular sentence, suggesting that another be left out, commenting on transitions used, complimenting one very strong sentence and gave a sample grade in grammar and a sample grade in the content. I learned so much from seeing their grading, and my daughter really felt like the comments helped. She is revising the paper to hand in again (one revision of each paper submitted does not count against the 15 per quarter that they will review for you). I am very pleased. We primarily wanted a school for paper ideas (some lesson plan suggestions that I could revise or use as I needed) and review of papers.
Janet
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BrendaPeter
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| Posted: Oct 25 2006 at 5:43pm | IP Logged
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Hi Janet,
Maybe I missed this but are you signed up with Kolbe's new Enhanced Evaluation Service?
Thx!
__________________
Blessings,
Brenda (mom to 6)
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Bookswithtea
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| Posted: Oct 25 2006 at 5:55pm | IP Logged
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teachingmyown wrote:
| He has a book analysis to turn in this week and I am worried it won't pass their standards. I don't feel confident enough to really judge it. |
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You can email your draft to one of the counselors for feedback. That's what we did. We had to rewrite all but 1 paragraph, and it was the most boring of all the paragraphs he had written, too.  I really dislike this book analysis process. The topic sentences (given to us) are so narrow that the child isn't even able to have original thoughts.
__________________
Blessings,
~Books
mothering ds'93 dd'97 dd'99 dd'02 ds'05 ds'07 and  due 9/10
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ALmom
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| Posted: Oct 25 2006 at 8:12pm | IP Logged
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Brenda, yes, we signed our high schooler up with the enhanced evaluation service. They are evaluating papers that are part of their plans, but even more important to me, they will evaluate any  paper whether or not it is one of their assigned books. We have to be fully enrolled with them for this service- but it is worth it to me. We are now waiting for an evaluation of a paper our dd did on Peralandra. They evaluated her first Theology paper already and this is the one she is re-working. I love having someone other than me reading her papers for a number of reasons:
1 She is a good writer, in general, and I am reaching my limits by the time they get to high school. I can sometimes feel that something just isn't quite right, but not sure how to lead them to better work or pin point the problem.
2 Because she is my daughter, I often know what she is thinking and understand things that she is saying that are not worded as clearly as maybe they should be. It's kind of like proofreading your own work - you catch some blatant things, but miss some things just because you keep reading what you know is supposed to be there instead of what is there.
3. My children like having another source of input.
4. Having to hand something in, inspires them to be more timely in its completion and also more careful in the particulars.
We are fully signed up for Kolbe with my high schooler, 6th grader and 4th grader. I only use the Enhanced Evaluation with my high schooler. My 6th grader and 4th grader are boys and reluctant writers so I'm still working on getting them to punctuate and say anything in some sort of order. I'm capable of helping them.
Even with full enrollement, I do whatever I want  and I was just assured that based on what we did our daughter could have received a Magna Cum Laude diploma from Kolbe so I really could still get the Kolbe transcript even without 4 years of science and with no Latin as long as I sent in sample works (I don't always mess with this). However, I do not feel in any way restricted to Kolbe requirements because I do have an independent source of transcripts. I simply decide whether I am using Kolbe transcript or my church school transcript when the child is close to graduation  whichever is easiest and most beneficial to us at the time, so I have quite a bit of built in flexibility. I know that if you follow a plan exactly and hand in certain work, you can get honors credit for it on the transcript - something not available through our church school. A lot depends on whether or not I have the time and energy to send a bunch of stuff in - but might this year since we have sent papers with Enhanced Evaluation anyway.
I use all kinds of things with my Kolbe enrolled students - like CHC, RC History, Writing Road ..., our own reading and projects, co-op classes, experiment books, Singapore Math. I could never, ever fit in anyone's box! I use whatever is useful to me from their plans - some is useful and some we skip. I have found them helpful even with my totally esoteric methods. I wanted their science and their writing evaluation mostly. However, I have found other things that we like and we use what we want and substitute or modify the rest. I never do history their way, but pull from portions of their plan on some of the primary sources we add to our RC History.
I can sometimes try to do too much and wear us all out - so Kolbe has helped me to step back and allow for the individual variations - helping, through the questions they ask when I call, to discern when my children are simply conning to get out of work and when it is wise to simply back off and re-evaluate approaches. I feel so much less stressed now than ever before - though I don't think that panicky feeling in the pit of your stomach ever completely disappears when you are working with a high schooler .
Maybe this gives a better picture of why Kolbe works so well for us.
Janet
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BrendaPeter
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| Posted: Oct 26 2006 at 5:06pm | IP Logged
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Thanks so much Janet for the info. I've learned so much from you over the past few years. The Enhanced Evaluation Service sounds great!
__________________
Blessings,
Brenda (mom to 6)
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4Real Forums : Living Learning
Topic: Comparison of MODG and Kolbe
