I have been reading and I cannot seem to find an answer to my question. I am considering picking up the CM approach with my 9th grader but I am unclear as to how I can translate into a credit for the year. We have used unit studies up until this year among other things, but I have never had to log things into a transcript for college like I have to do now. How do I do these lessons and then grade, when there are no grades, and translate into a year’s work of stuff that I can prove to the proper people? It just seems a little comfusing to me. BTW, I have homeschooled since the beginning – currently have a 7, 11, 13 y.o.
You don’t have to assign grades. Try searching on the topic “narrative transcript” or I can point you to a few book resources, but basically what you want to do is describe what you do, how much time you spend doing it, how you assess when you are “done” and what resources you use. We assign grades for a few topics, like math and science (although I rarely show the kids) and then do narrative transcripts for English, history, etc.
Bookworm, I would like to know more about narrative transcripts. Can you give me more info on that? Sounds interesting and I’m doing homework on homeschooling the CM way through high school for Mary (to start with, then Caleb, Ashley & Chris). Thanks. 🙂
Malissa, basically what you’d want to do is name the course, assign a credit (for example, 1 credit for a full year course, 1/2 for a half-year course) and then describe exactly what the student did, and approximately how long it took to do it. You’d want to describe how you assess what the student did (when the work was “enough” for the credit) and you’d include any materials (books, videos, field trips, interviews, work experience, internships, whatever!) Here is an example that is also in a book I have: