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cheesehead mom
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Working on transcrits ladies and quick question. PE pass/fail or do you put it as a grade and figure it with GPA? Assuming if you put it as P/F you still count it as credits earned but do not use it as 'quality points' for dividing for the GPA. Thanks, should not be doing this with a head cold!!
Laura
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SallyT
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Gosh, I'll have to go back and look at my last high-schooler's transcript to make sure, but I *think* it's been one of those "easy A" courses for us, rather than P/F. So it did get calculated with her GPA. I hadn't planned to do anything differently with my current high-schooler.
Sally
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Mackfam
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It gets a letter grade, and like Sally, it's an easy A which gets calculated into the GPA.
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Jen Mackintosh
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JennGM
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I'm just laughing at myself because it was PE that brought DOWN my GPA! Not so easy A for me!
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Jennifer G. Miller
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cheesehead mom
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Thanks ladies!
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SallyT
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Oh, well, at our house PE has been things like ballet and folk dancing for one child, while for another it's been running the Spartan mud race and triathlons. Whatever somebody can physically do to the best of their ability=A. I do love homeschooling . . . :)
Sally
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Kristie 4
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We need 4 PE credits in Manitoba! If I had given a letter grade it would have brought my son's GPA way down!! Nothing like getting an A+ in literature and latin and a C in PE 
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Kristie in Canada
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TryingMyBest
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Sorry this may be a dumb question but do you grade your high school kids? I know there are some programs where you send in the child's tests which are graded by the program and I assume the program produces a transcript. But if you're not doing that do you assign grades yourself? And if, how do you do it? Do you write your own tests? Or come up with the standards for an A, B, etc? Is it hard to be fair when grading your own children? And if you submit that transcript a college, do they ask to see documentation supporting the grade?
Sorry for the tangent...
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SallyT
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I do grade the courses that I assign, though my high schoolers have also always taken outside courses, where they have received grades from college professors or co-op teachers.
I do not typically give tests at all, though I have Charlotte-Mason-style exams ("write everything you know about X") scheduled for the end of each semester this year, and they do do the tests in their math curricula (or, in my son's case currently, take online classes). My kids do do a good bit of writing, though again I don't tend to grade individual assignments, only to give feedback.
I give semester grades in each class based on the following:
*work completed -- has the person actually done what I assigned? Bare minimum? Or above and beyond?
*level of understanding and engagement, as evidenced by written work and conversation.
*in the case of math, where there are test grades, I take the average of those grades, and that's the math grade. Typically I have my student compute that grade himself and give it to me.
*ultimately I ask myself whether, at the end of a given course, my student would more likely flounder or succeed in a college class in that subject. Has the student, through work in that subject, acquired not just knowledge in the subject, enough that he can talk about it easily and knowledgeably, but also the kind of work ethic and study habits (including the ability to follow a syllabus, meet deadlines, ask for help when needed, etc -- I become a lot more serious about this kind of thing toward the end of high school) that would make him successful in a setting other than my home.
So for most coursework I don't have a magical mathematical formula -- I don't have a hard-and-fast standard for A, B, and so on -- and my grading is somewhat subjective, though I don't think I grade my own children any more cushily than I would grade any other humanities student. And actually, my grading process isn't that different from, say, my husband's process of grading undergraduate theology students -- at the end of the day coming up with a purely quantitative grade that accurately reflects a student's performance is probably impossible in the humanities, which aren't quantitative in their very nature. So . . . there's that. It just is kind of loosey-goosey, but I have standards in mind other than, "Do I think my child is the most wonderful person who ever existed?" :) I'm thinking, "Is this student's understanding of the material excellent, or just so-so? Is this student's ability to communicate his understanding excellent, or just so-so?"
We also live in a state that mandates yearly standardized testing, which I find not terribly helpful in the lower grades, but more helpful for high school, because it does give me benchmarks to see how the grades I give correlate with a more objective standard by which college readiness is measured. For a transcript for college, test scores (ACT, SAT) do indicate whether my grades have any bearing in reality or not. Doing some test-prep work, such as practice tests, gives me an indication ahead of time whether we're in the ballpark.
I did really worry, when my oldest went off to college with a 3.7 high school GPA, that I had been too soft, that her college grades would reveal that I hadn't prepared her for reality, and so on -- silly me, I thought once she'd graduated my worries were over, but no! But she's turned out to be a very good college student, and has remarked more than once that she felt very well prepared, which has given me more confidence this second time around that the grades I give do accurately reflect the state of things.
Long answer to a short question, I know! But that's more or less what I do.
Sally
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cheesehead mom
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One more question..I know many of you do poetry memorization do you just figure that into Language Arts or do you give them .25 or a credit on their transcript?
Laura
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Mackfam
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I roll our Poetry into what we label: English (either 9, 10, 11, or 12) on my transcript...but yes, it gets rolled into that rather than broken out. UNLESS a child has really done a concentrated course in poetry - enough to call it its own special class. In which case, it would be an elective.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Mackfam
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Since this has become a kind of general GPA/transcript thread, do you mind if I change the title of it to reflect that, Laura? Then we can have a general GPA/transcript thread to return to here. Is that ok with you?
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Jen Mackintosh
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cheesehead mom
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Sounds great Jen, thanks so much!
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SallyT
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What Jen said, re poetry. It's all part of English. I've made poetry a special "seminar" within our senior English -- though I guess I could have called it an elective, still it's under the heading of literature, so it seemed appropriate to me to keep it there.
Sally
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Kristie 4
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My son recieved an extra 1/2 credit for 'poetry/drama/verse' (I can't remember exactly what I called it). I gave him this as he had read SOOOOO many long works (Mabinogean, Kalavala, old Robin Hood etc. etc. etc. as well as heaps of old Greek plays and much poetry) in addition to all of his history and lit. reading that it warranted an extra 1/2 credit (at least  )). This had been a major part of his highschool years- one of his passions that he put considerable time into.
My dd, on the other hand, that reads Shakespeare compulsively, will not get the extra 1/2 credit as she is not a reader, and the Shakespeare helps fill in her English credits.
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Angel
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On the subject of PE... might be a good idea to check with the colleges and see what they want. My ds is interested in a college which specifically states that they do not want any PE courses figured into the GPA. I was just going to do P/F.
And now I've got my transcript question: what do you do with courses that have a little done every year? Like, I know that many people do a little geography every year or government/civics, etc. Do you put those classes in the year they're completed or roll them into other classes or give partial credit every year...?
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Mackfam
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It depends on the course for us.
For something like govt/civics, I just counted up the cumulative amount of work and reading and gave a full credit for Junior Year in Gov't/Civics on the transcript. I probably could have given more, but that would have looked funny since my senior is getting more credit in that for her senior year since her history is Modern History with a Political Science focus.
For something like Geography, I typically just roll those credit hours into history.
For your question in general, for topics that are studied a little each year, with not enough to grant at least a half credit for that year, then I just wait until I DO have enough for a half credit of cumulative work (or a full credit if that's the case), and add it to the transcript at that point. My goal has been to create a transcript that walks and talks like a typical (public/private school) academic transcript that an academically geared high school student from our state would graduate with.
And....re. the PE on the transcript question: in addition to checking potential colleges/universities, it's also good to look and see what an academic transcript for your particular state looks like. If your state says that in order to earn an academic transcript from "x" state, a child needs 2 full credits in physical education, then you should probably consider that as well. While you may be targeting one institution that doesn't want/need PE, you may look to another that does require it. And....if you're like us...and still don't really know where your graduate may want to attend, you'll want to package your transcript to be as generic as possible, to look scholarly without being over the top, and to look like other academic transcripts coming from graduates from your state. Just to keep as many doors open as possible.
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Jen Mackintosh
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Angel
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Mackfam wrote:
| For your question in general, for topics that are studied a little each year, with not enough to grant at least a half credit for that year, then I just wait until I DO have enough for a half credit of cumulative work (or a full credit if that's the case), and add it to the transcript at that point. My goal has been to create a transcript that walks and talks like a typical (public/private school) academic transcript that an academically geared high school student from our state would graduate with. |
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So... would you do the same thing for a science? Split it up into half credits? I'm just a little worried that we have a lot of these issues because we're more toward the unschooling end of the spectrum. For instance, my ds didn't do a standard year of biology; instead, he'll probably have it spread out over 3 years (or at least 2). American history is the same. I'm a little concerned that if I go with completion date it'll look like he did way more than humanly possible in his junior and senior year... and to some extent that would be right, because he hasn't done it all his junior and senior year.
Mackfam wrote:
And....re. the PE on the transcript question: in addition to checking potential colleges/universities, it's also good to look and see what an academic transcript for your particular state looks like. If your state says that in order to earn an academic transcript from "x" state, a child needs 2 full credits in physical education, then you should probably consider that as well. While you may be targeting one institution that doesn't want/need PE, you may look to another that does require it. And....if you're like us...and still don't really know where your graduate may want to attend, you'll want to package your transcript to be as generic as possible, to look scholarly without being over the top, and to look like other academic transcripts coming from graduates from your state. Just to keep as many doors open as possible. |
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Oh, sure. My ds is still doing PE and I'm still putting it on his transcript, but I wasn't planning on including it as a letter grade for his GPA, that's all. He'll actually probably end up with 3-4 full credits of PE. So it'll be on there, but his GPA will just be added up without it.
(I'm one of the people whose GPA went *down* when PE was figured in, too.  )
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Angela
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cheesehead mom
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I think you can put them in any year really. My friend's daughter's transcript was very basic--a MODG one and it did not even give description of classes and she got in many good colleges. I think being consistant and fair are the key words! I ended up doing P/F for PE as that is what I saw on other transcripts but the posts are correct that you can do it either way. So appreciate all of the help!
Laura
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Mackfam
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I totally agree with Laura on this, Angela. Just spread out the total credits earned across the 4 years so that the transcript is a fair visual representation of the big overall picture of his high school.
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Jen Mackintosh
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: GPA and Transcript Questions
