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The following is a post from contributing writer Roan from Joyful Always.
Recently, I dropped off my oldest child at college (well, I actually did not drop her off; I stayed in the area for two weeks to help her get settled and to make sure she would be able to survive without her mother). While I was there, she attended freshman orientation and began her college classes. After she went to her classes several times and we discussed her syllabi and her professors’ expectations, it became evident to me that I could have done a few things differently to prepare my child for college.
Thankfully, these are not major items, but small things that I never thought about. I am not second guessing the academic content of our homeschool curriculum, rather I am looking for ways to improve our high school experience.
Here are some examples of things I would have done differently:
Current Events
My children need to read and discuss both state and national current events. My college-aged daughter and her sister skim our daily newspaper, but mostly they read human interest stories only, like “Cook of the Week.” We do not have cable TV, so my children rarely watch television news. I realize that both my children and I need to increase our knowledge of local, state, and national events.
Two curricula that I use, IEW (Institute For Excellence in Writing) and Sonlight, schedule current events writing assignments on a weekly basis. However, in the past I have chosen not to require my children to write them. I do not have a valid reason why I have skipped these current events assignments, I just have. But recently I made a change in our homeschool. I am reading more national and world news articles myself, and I have assigned weekly written summaries of a news article to my 11th grader. I plan to encourage my 9th grader to start reading our daily newspaper, and will be assigning him weekly written summaries beginning next year.
Time Management
I am guilty of micro-managing my children’s time. I print out detailed daily schedules for us to follow, and I also schedule my children’s daily schoolwork in specific increments. I realize that this is necessary for younger students, but as my children work through high school, I need to give them broader goals and allow them to manage the day-to-day details of meeting that goal.
For example, instead of assigning my child a specific number of pages to read in a particular book each day, I now tell them when the entire chapter should be completed, and allow them to divide up the pages however they like. I am hoping that giving my children more control over the daily workload will prevent them from being so overwhelmed the first time they view a college course syllabus.
Composition and Presentations
I plan to assign and teach more demanding writing assignments. Again, I have the curriculum that provides this instruction, I just need to utilize it and maintain a high expectation level. I also need to grade their writing more critically.
Another area that I need to plan and implement involves presentations. My 9th grader has been assigned the task of creating a power point presentation of my daughter’s college campus. I took numerous pictures while we were there, and he will conduct research to include with the photos. He will present his final product to some of our close friends who homeschool their children. I have yet to assign a presentation type project to my 11th grader, but I am brainstorming for ideas.
As homeschooling parents, we never stop learning. There is always room for improvement, and thankfully our children are resilient.
Roan is the homeschooling mother of five children, one who recently graduated from their homeschool. She is currently homeschooling her remaining children who are 7, 9, 14, and 16 years old. Roan blogs regularly at her personal blog, Joyful Always, about marathon training, homeschooling, homemaking, and missing her daughter who is away at college.
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Excellent article. Thank you for sharing. I have a sophomore and have been trying to make some changes this year but I was making them slowly which may be a mistake.
The only thing problem we have is that my son likes to be assigned reading each day. I will have to focus on giving him assignments for the week and helping him learn to split them up.
My other issue is the time management. Without it he’s lost. And so am I. With five kids being homeschooled, I have to set up times on who I’m working with when or they all want me at the same time.
A good place to start would be to give your son weekly reading assignments, and then let him divide the reading up into daily readings. At first, you may want to help him determine how to divide it up.
I have a schedule for our school days. I follow it pretty closely, but within those time blocks of independent work, I am now letting my children choose the order of how they want to complete their assignments. For example, instead of scheduling 30 minutes for health, 45 minutes for science, 30 minutes for reading, etc., I just write on the schedule “30 minutes work alone”. My child knows which subjects must be completed independently, so he just works alone during those times. I also schedule time to meet with each high school student–to go over his work and just see how he is doing. I also schedule time each day for grading schoolwork.
Awesome advice! I have an 8th grade boy now (oldest) that I was planning on using Sonlight and IEW with but Apologia science and Saxon math. I was wondering if you felt that Sonlight prepared them enough for college other than what was in the article. I am a firm believer in IEW but see that the kids fight me and I don’t follow through on it as much as I should. Thanks for the pep talk about pressing harder to finish the assignments well.
Yes. I do feel that Sonlight prepares the student for college. I really do! Especially now that I will take their advice and do those current events assignments! 🙂 I use some Sonlight and some other curricula for my high school:
9th grade: teacher made Mississippi History and geography
10th grade: Notgrass World History with Sonlight core 200 and 300 supplemental reading
11th grade: Sonlight Core 100
12th grade: Notgrass Government and Economics with Sonlight upper level cores supplemental reading.
Something else I’m planning to add–the tests that Notgrass offers and book reports on some of the Sonlight books.
IEW–I am getting serious about grading these papers. I also bought two DVD courses for my current high schoolers this year. SWI C and SICC C. I feel like both of these courses are improving my students’ writing.
Bottom line: Hold your students accountable to deadlines and course content, no matter what program you use. 🙂
Oh–I use Apologia science and Saxon math–love both of them!
These are great points, so true about current events. I’m guilty of doing the same thing, but I can see where it’s valid, particularly as they get older, to talk about current events in the confines of the family before they head to college. Thanks for sharing!
We are really working on discussing the current events around here. I am not where I want to be yet, but I am working on it!
These are really fantastic, practical tips. I did #2 well, #3 OK, and #1 not well at all!
On my personal blog, I shared a 4th tip–teach them to set an alarm and get up at a set time. I do not do this! But again, we are working on it. My college daughter wisely set her first class at 9:00, since she is not a morning person. She has learned to set her alarm for 7:30 to make time for Bible reading, grooming, and breakfast–it’s working out, but I want my others to practice being ready, completely ready at a certain time every day before they leave home. Now our starting time for our homeschool depends on how many miles I have to run each morning! Ha! 🙂
Dear Roan,
What a well-timed blog! Currently, I have a ninth-grader and some youngers. Whenever I meet a homeschool graduate, they get the third degree about being prepared for college and “anything else I should know?” As for your 11th graders presentation, how about kill 2 birds with one stone? I became interested in current events in 8th grade when our teacher required us to give a presentation on a current event! We started out with 1 min. presentations, then worked up to 5+ minutes.
When I was growing up, we had a world map by the dining room table. As my parents solved the world’s problems (somehow no one ever called up and asked for their solutions, though!), I checked out the locations on the map. Another way to get the children involved is to make connections through people you know. For example, Marie’s cousin is visiting Belgium, the dentist’s brother in law is stationed in Kuwait. With so many people having been deployed for the last 10 years, you may be surprised at some military connections you have that you didn’t know about. Here is a link to a world map of military personnel: http://www.vetfriends.com/US-deployments-overseas/historical-military-troop-data.cfm
Yes, I’m a newsgeek. Another good website is newsmap.jp The interesting thing about this website is that stories are: set for your country (you can look at the one’s in other countries–the bar is across the top), they are color-coded by news, technology, sports, etc., and the size of the headline reflects how many people have read the story so it is self-editing. It’s easier to pick out important stories as they are usually in a larger font.
Lastly, it’s amazing how much the national/international news affects what happens in YOUR life. When my husband worked at a higher Army headquarters, he was part of the planners working on the Afghanistan surge. People at church would say, “Where’s John?” I would reply, “He’s working on the surge plan. As soon as they get it to Pres. Obama, he can make a decision.” They looked so surprised that today’s headlines determined what time my husband came home for dinner! Likewise, when the earthquake hit Haiti, my husband’s office coordinated the use of the airfield and logistics of supply. (I said, “Who cares? Can’t they land, unload and take off again?” My husband replied, “Do you want the medical supplies on the ground blocking the runway so that the doctors and nurses on the plane in the air can’t land? Or the less critical supplies to get on the ground before clean water and food?”) Oh.
Sorry to go on and on. It’s our passion to see how God is working out His plan in the world today. We learn about that through keeping up with the news. Good luck and have fun!!
Thank you ! What wonderful information and links you shared. I appreciate it so much. I will take your advice and try to make the national and world events more personal–I’m sure we have many more connections than I realize! I have world and U.S maps in my schoolroom, but I would love to have them on my kitchen wall–but–my wall is all windows! I do use map placemats from time to time.
Thanks again for taking the time to share so much info. 🙂