Charlotte Mason High School

Eager to hear others answers.  We have been travelling the high school road two years now. I have been disappointed at the lack of help and encouragement for CM high school. There is so much help for the early years but not much for the high school years. I wonder why? I will be happy to share what we are doing, but would love to hear from others first.

Michelle at what age did you start working on this with your boys? Specifically the note taking and the exposure to other ideas of creation?

I agree with the need for much, much more on the middle school and high school years in terms of just what is being said here.  College is not going to be Charlotte Mason friendly in all aspects.  A lot of the wonderful skills and principles and the over arching philosophy of CM are preparing our children in fabulous ways BUT … They will have to take those framework skills and transition them to the real world environment they are likely to face at any junior college or 4 year college regardless of their major. 

Science is only one area where we are severely lacking strong, college bound curriculum planning in the CM world. 

Composition is another.  Writing responses is 99% of how your child will have to respond to their studies in college.  Their momentous oral narration skills will not be helpful UNLESS they have been transition to the page too.  And that is easier said than done even with strong readers and strong oral narrators.  There is a great void in our CM world on how to take a strong oral narrator from that point to strong, well written narrations, and then to papers of significant breadth and length.  It is one thing to write a narration on a reading of an act in Hamlet.  It is quite another to turn that in to a three to five page paper – (not an uncommon request in a liberal arts major’s classes.)

I have no fear of the textbook in our CM education.  I DO however, wish their were far more reviewed and listed in the Bookfinder.  Apologia and a spattering of living books CAN NOT be the only thing on Science in our Bookfinder.  There are a lot of textbook publishers out there – some much, much better than others – and we need to share that information on the Bookfinder with one another for this to work!

The same holds true with our Literature selections in the Bookfinder.  We must elaborate those and offer reviews/comments on a WIDE variety of literature for the older years too!  I’ve said it before, but if you are looking at the Bookfinder and then not selecting a book from there, then post what you did use for everyone to see. 

My .02

@ TailorMade, yes I know those programs well and they are good.  I think my idea was more on a curriculum planning level and not on a specific text/curriculum to use.  Although I think those need to be organized better too.  In other words more in guidance for how often, how much, when to introduce/transition etc.  The way things are so well discussed and laid out for the younger years in CM.  The middle and older years strike me as more vague and less well plumped out?  Might just be me – lol.

Jen– I found your post very helpful. My oldest is 8th grade this year so I am starting to worry about high school too.

Can you say any more about the papers you have him write? How do you pick topics? Does he do library research? Use footnotes? Things like that?

Also I googled Dive Biology. Is the internet textbook just a series of links? I am also not completely sure of our stand on creation. What take does Dive have? Does one do the experiments at home or just watch them on the video?

Thanks

Nebby

Oh goodness… I wish you both lived close, and you’d see how crazy we really are! There’s a lot of laughter and fun. Also, some frustration when math doesn’t work out like we want! 🙂

As far as DIVE Biology, he is a young earth creationist. We still have the conversations about where our ideas might differ from his. My son does his experiments and watches the experiment videos. He takes notes on the lectures (more like a college class) and uses the internet text (links). The instructor does indicate that the links provide a more detailed/difficult text than using any of the others that he has listed. I’ve also toyed with the idea of sending him to a Landry Academy Lab Day Camp. This would cover all of the pertinent Biology labs and how to write a lab report in two days–from someone who actually loves science. I haven’t been able to afford it, but I think it’s a great option.

Writing… I’ve used a couple of different curriculums. My absolute favorite (hands down–flat out amazing) is Lost Tools of Writing. I know this probably doesn’t fall within the CM way of doing things, but I still love it. The best part of LTOW is the way it teaches students to think. My kids can narrate lots of things, but coming up with systematic arguments about a topic… not so much. As a part of the persuasive process students have to come up with arguments on both sides of an issue and then evaluate the arguments. (I find my kids have opinions about ideas, but have no ability to think outside their own beliefts. For example, they think abortion is wrong, but cannot come up with reasons why someone would find it an acceptable alternative. After brainstorming both sides, they can more easily empathize with someone and/or speak respectfully to an argument than before.) Finally, they pick a side and write a paper. We’ve done topics as mundane as “whether Dad should take us all to Florida for vacation” and as complex as “whether Achilles should have continued to fight in the war for Agamemnon.” Once you learn the way of thinking, you can apply it to any subject. We took one twelve week period to learn the basics. Now when I want to assign a paper, I look at a subject (history, english…) and we come up with a topic. Then I give him the deadlines and help with the edits.

As far as footnoting goes, this is an easy curriculum to work on citing external sources. I make him read two or three articles about the topic as well as his text and then have him work through the brainstorming section. Whenever he writes down a possible argument, he writes a symbol that shows where he got the information. When he picks his top three arguments, he already has his sources.

(As a side note… I actually use the LTOW information for my other job to teach college students how to create a speech. Learning to research and think is incredibly valuable for writing and speaking. A good portion of my students have no idea how to brainstorm three main points.)

Writing is a skill. The more my children do it (and redo it), the better they get. I’m also using 501 Writing Prompts once a week. (I do this with my middle schoolers as well.) I pick a topic and give them 30 minutes to write an essay. There are a couple of reasons for this approach. First, I want them to get used to thinking and writing quickly. This is a skill that will come in handy when they have essay questions in college. Second, I want to prepare them for the writing portion of the ACT. I don’t want them to panic when they have to write with a time limit. My hope is that if we do it every week, it will feel normal. After they are finished, we go over the essays as a group. We kindly critique the argumentation as well as the writing.

I try to evenly distribue the subjects throughout the first four days of the week. I do schedule some on Friday, but I try to have less so that we can meet together and discuss the week. Full disclosure… if something isn’t going well in our schooling it is probably because I have assumed my children understand how to do something or because I’m not checking or engaging in it. For instance, if I write down “History Project” for my son, I might assume that he’d love coming up with a project. He would avoid it all week and then when I asked about it on Friday, he’d look at me and say, “Sorry, I just didn’t know what to do.” (If I assigned the same thing to my 7th grade daughter, she’d have the topic, the research, and the products I needed to purchase within 30 minutes. 🙂 ) It’s always good to know your kiddos. So now, for my son, we spend 30 minutes the first day brainstorming, the next day I assign him to research his ideas, the third day I have him make a shopping list for us…

This is probably more than you ever wanted to know! Even though I am no expert in CM  (I love to read others who have more experience (Bookworm)), I’d be happy to answer any other questions.

Jen