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Martha
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| Posted: Nov 26 2006 at 12:17pm | IP Logged
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Are the history and science courses usually a semester or the entire year?
For example: biology a 1 year course or 1 semester
same thing for american history or government??
I see Seton (and other providers) seems to do a lot of entire year courses, but I don't remember it being that way and it certainly isn't in college. I know some of it depends on which method of credit calculation is used?
I can see both a positive and a negative to this.
Positive is the subject should be covered very thoroughly if given double the time.
Negative is it limits ability to abtain other course credits.
So what do you ladies who are experienced in this do or more importantly wish you had done?
I'm trying to draw up a plan. Not so much to be strictly enforced, as to have goals to attain and a frame to work within.
We do want them to go to college. (Even should they not do so, it would certainly be a benefit to be ABLE to do it.) We also have met many families that have children who are not ready because they had lots of backpeddling to cram into those last 2 years. (Not just hs-ers either, this appears to be as big a problem in brick schools too) I'd like to avoid this. If possible I'd like them to be in a position to take dual/early enrollment or CLEP starting in 11th.
TIA!
(and yes I am a worrier!  )
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Martha
mama to 7 boys & 4 girls
Yes, they're all ours!
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jackiemomof7
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| Posted: Nov 26 2006 at 3:29pm | IP Logged
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For my dc biology and history are 1yr courses and gov't was a semester. I use my state guidelines to help me to determine how long courses should be.
Hope this is helpful!
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Jackie wife to Jim for 27!! years, proud army mom of Chris(25),Chef Matthew(24) and Sister Grace of Benedectines (21),Joshua(19),Nicholas(17),Jaymee(15), Elizabeth(13) and 2 in Heaven.Grandma to 3!
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Martha
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| Posted: Nov 26 2006 at 4:00pm | IP Logged
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okay. wow. things have changed in the 15 years since I graduated. I spent an entire HALF of every school day during the last 2 years of highschool out of the school doing other things (vocational training, community college classes, got a job...). Do kids not do this anymore? How do they do this if they still need 4 maths, 4 english, 3 science, 3 history, and 2 years foriegn language +++ ? 
Okay. I'm just going to make my own plans as I started and go from there. I have no requirements to do it the brick schools' way anyhow, and I'm confident (sorta) I can make a schedule to get the classes needed for college taken care of.
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Martha
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jackiemomof7
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| Posted: Nov 26 2006 at 6:04pm | IP Logged
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At our local highschool (public) the kids can take college eng or other approved courses and get high school as well as college credits. I have to register as a non-accredit school with my state so I have to make sure I have the 4 eng. 4 math etc... but that doesn't mean they can't take these at a local college. Seton allows credit for college classes for some courses. Also I may give a year credit but again it may not take a year for my child to do the course but maybe just a semester. Don't know if I am making sense!! Long day here flu bug is making the rounds.
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Jackie wife to Jim for 27!! years, proud army mom of Chris(25),Chef Matthew(24) and Sister Grace of Benedectines (21),Joshua(19),Nicholas(17),Jaymee(15), Elizabeth(13) and 2 in Heaven.Grandma to 3!
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ALmom
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| Posted: Nov 27 2006 at 2:10pm | IP Logged
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Each state is different. Here, we take courses at the local colleges but only get half a high school credit for full college courses (but the colleges recogognize the other college credits so it does turn out to be worthwhile especially if you do not have access to AP tests). (This policy is true of public, private and church (ie home) schools in our state).
One thing you may look at is Carnegie hours in your state (most private tutors will know the requirements here), college requirements for the colleges your child might consider (or a range of colleges from easy to get into and up to Ivy League just to get an idea of what might be expected on the transcript when that time comes) and what your state requires. This does not mean you have to meet all of these - but it does give you an idea and you can keep an eye open for time spent and ways to "count" things for a credit where it might prove helpful down the road. As a for instance - when our dd started talking about music degrees, we checked out Eastman's requirements figuring that would give us an idea of the high end and if we met those, we should be "safe" anywhere. We also checked out our state college's requirements for entry in their music school as this was probably the most affordable and most realistic option for our dd. They required one less science than our state high schools (and one less than Eastman - so we decided not to sweat the extra science once we knew our dd definitely did not want to go to Eastman for undergraduate. Now, to get into the community college for our state, we had to have the 4th science (but since our dd SAT scores were so high, they did allow her to take courses there after graduation though we sweated it for a while). She was already admitted to the state University so it was kind of funny how this all panned out but our state requires four of everything before graduation from public school and the junior colleges require non - accredited schools to meet those same standards or an equivalent (ie they might substitute a history for U.S. Govt. requirement) but would not accept less than 4 sciences.
Generally, for high school, you want to see a certain amount of time spent on courses to make them half or full credit courses - but it doesn't mean a student cannot finish them earlier. I am not obligated to the Carnegie hours, but it does give me some idea about whether or not I am being reasonable in assigning credit. I do think that we have a certain obligation to be realistic in what we give credit for so that when I claim on the transcript that my child had so many history credits, this is somehow equivalent to the work the college will presume is behind this. I guess I feel a certain responsibility here as this is no longer just a matter of me educating children in what they need, but making a claim for admission requirements and for scholarship competition. The more records you have (not necessarily just standard tests, etc. but something that you can pull from to give an accurate and fair description of what your child actually did do, the better off you will be in the long run and the easier the application process will be).
I do think that if you are looking at college entrance, it is important that there is some sort of reasonable standard - ie I don't want to give full or half year credits if my child does not put some effort and time into what they are learning - even if they are having a blast and learning tons (I might be able to incorporate the hours spent on a project into some other related subject to count towards those hours, etc.) I do not nit pick over hours - I promise, I don't have time to mess with that - but if my child keeps a record of time spent and days worked, then this does help in the record keeping department and in determining reasonable credit allocation for any out of the norm type things they do.
If you have a record somewhere in some coherant, organized fashion, it helps when you actually begin the application process. Most traditionally schooled students will have clubs, etc. that will go on the transcript, honor societies, etc. My dd did not have access to much of this, so it was up to us to be able to append a list of extracurricular activities that she did during her high school years (some applications give guidelines for the hours spent to warrant inclusion) and it sure would have been easier not to have to back track through four years of old calanders trying to remember all that she did (and what grade she did it in). Thankfully we did still have the old calendars.  I promise you, it will be easy to forget in the rush of applications junior year, that back in 9th grade your child did this really nifty project that is so applicable to her intended degree, etc. Just have your child keep an organized record of time spent, what was done, when and keep it all together with identification as to dates. If necessary, you can sort some of it out later - but what seems trivial now, may prove to be just the thing to include 4 years from now. Sometimes we had a hard time deciding whether to give "credit" for music or to just include it in extracurricular. We ended up realizing that she had spent way more hours than what constitutes one course, but typically you wouldn't see music credit for more than one credit in any given year, so we decided to give her one music credit each year (based her grade on her music teacher's end of year evaluation) and then listed her orchestra and other music things as extracurricular. It was honest and fair to both my dd and the school doing an evaluation of whether or not to offer her a music scholarship.
Just some ideas. Whatever you decide to do - keep records of what is done even if it is simply jotted down in one notebook at the end of each week/day with approx. time spent.
Janet
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dizzylaurel
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| Posted: Dec 07 2006 at 9:19pm | IP Logged
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We'll also be doing high school next year; we're going to schedule by semester, just like they do in college. Math will be a year of algebra and one of geometry, but we may alternate semesters. Year three we'll probably do consumer math.
History we're planning a semester of PA history (required by law to teach at some point) and then one of civics/government. Then we'll do a year of US history and see where are for junior year.
Science we tend to do by semester as well, but this is the subject I wonder a bit about as well. I'd like to not just do bio and chemistry, but throw in a semester of physics or something more specific....from the folks that I know that are now in college, it seems that more and more homeschoolers are looked at in a different way; some schools have staff specifically for homeschool applicants. That's encouraging!
Blessings as you head off on the same journey!
Laurel in PA
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guitarnan
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| Posted: Dec 08 2006 at 9:08am | IP Logged
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Here in MD, a Carnegie unit is one clock hour, and it takes 120 Carnegie units to make one academic year. So, for a semester class you would need to spend 60 hours doing things related to that topic (this includes field trips), and of course for a year-long class you need 120 hours. This works out to about 45 minutes a day if you do the subject five days a week. You need to carefully log all your time if you use Carnegie units.
Janet's advice about looking at particular colleges' entrance requirements is wonderful. I did this last spring...I picked University of MD (state school), University of Calif. (dh's state of residence, so also a state school), and a couple of other schools that my son had mentioned. Then I made a little table of their entrance requirements. Some colleges do have specific advice for homeschoolers on their websites.
I felt pretty overwhelmed when I started this, but it really helped me see what requirements were common to all the colleges I checked. Everyone wants English (4 years), Math (3 years), Social Studies, Science, Foreign Language. Many also want a year of Computer Science (we're "outsourcing" this one via the community college) and some Art and Music.
Don't worry, you'll get it sorted out!
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Nancy in MD. Mom of ds (24) & dd (18); 31-year Navy wife, move coordinator and keeper of home fires. Writer and dance mom.
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4Real Forums : High School Years and Beyond
Topic: Planning for highschool?
