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High School Credit & Actual Hours Schooling – What do you do?
- This topic has 13 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 9 years, 10 months ago by
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You have or have had a high schooler who will be applying to college …
I am wondering how you approached giving your child a “credit” for a course. How many hours did you consider enough to count the course as a high school credit on their transcript or report cards?
Along the same lines how did you determine the number of assignments or amount of a text to be covered to count as a high school credit?
Can we really just do this ourselves using our own criteria?! Sometimes I’m still in awe of the powers held by homeschooling parents. 🙂
Found my answers I think at AO’s site – https://www.amblesideonline.org/HighSchool.shtml#CreditHours
But can some of you still share here what you’ve done?
I would suggest to those of you with middle schoolers heading down this path to start thinking about this now. It doesn’t seem to daunting to get 21 +/- hours for graduation until you start to see that you don’t just use one textbook and do the same thing term to term. At least for us that has been true and I can’t imagine (or maybe now I will) that we would change that pattern. We might use a dozen texts for History and the time spent weekly might vary drastically depending on a multitude of variables for that term. With our three terms a year plan … it gets sort of complicated fast. So it wouldn’t be as simple to calculate and record that credit.
It’s too late when you’ve plotted out your year and then discover it isn’t going to work out. I have one child who did high school level work in one subject before high school. I’m going to give her credit but I wish I’d had the information before I planned her course that year. I would have felt more sure about it.
While I’m rambling on … most states want 4 hours of English credit. For us that is an interesting thing to think through too since we’ve operated like this – Literature, Composition – and not necessarily the compositions pulling from the Literature as they might if I’d thought that through a little more. Of course we could go back and “fix” it by writing a paper/essay on said Literature if we were wanting to count that credit. But clearly we’ve got oodles of hours for that one English credit.
Don’t quote me here. I’m really thinking out loud with you all. But I thought it might be helpful to someone else! Maybe not?! lol.
The guideline I am using is this:
For a course we take/purchase and complete I will assign 1 credit, no matter how fast or slow they get through it. So Apologia Biology is 1 credit when we finish the textbook, as is Math U See Geometry or One Year Adventure Novel.
For courses we’re putting together ourselves I will go by hours. 120-180 hours is the generally accepted guide for 1 credit, with lab courses aiming for the upper end of that range. That puts half credit courses at 60-90 hours. You can literally have a student count hours if you wish. You can also figure out rough guidelines. For example if a student works on the subject 3.5 hours a week it is a full credit of 120 hours in 35 weeks. That could be 42 minutes 5 days a week, or an hour and 10 minutes 3 days a week. A student working an hour a day five days per week finishes a credit up in 24 weeks. Up that to spending an hour and a half per day five days a week (think courses where you read and write daily) and the one credit is obtained in 16 weeks, a one semester class. Again, these numbers all have a student hitting 120 hours, but if the class is a lab science they would want to spend more time to be closer to the 150-180 hour range. (Or just skip the whole counting hours thing for science and do a traditional course from start to finish).
I find that Lee Binz is a great help with seeing all this. She has books and ebooks galore including a series that are only $2.99 each and have titles like Planning High School Courses, How to Homeschool 9th and 10th Grades, and Comprehensive Homeschool Records.
Claire, what about pulling some of those oodles of hours in the English language arts and literature area into an elective course such as British and American Literature alongside an English I credit as well?
The way I’m expecting it to work for Makayla next year in that arena is this:
1 credit for a creative writing course (she’ll be doing One Year Adventure Novel).
1 credit for English I or Literature (this will take into account things like Spelling Wisdom for grammar and spelling, written narrations for literature and others subjects such as history, the literature she reads and discusses with me and with her book club, poetry or other writing projects she undertakes outside the One Year Adventure Novel, a Movie vs. Literature analysis (see a movie and read the book and discuss), etc.
Does that make sense? I think with very little extra effort she will end up with enough hours for an English or Literature course outside of the work she does with One Year Adventure Novel.
Good timing. I’m plotting out high school, too. I’m using much the same guideline as Tristan mentioned – purchased courses count for a credit or 1/2 credit as indicated and self made courses, I’ll use a rough hours guideline.
I will be watching these posts with interest! Can’t believe I’m at those years already! Thank you ladies for sharing your wisdom.
I am following all the HS posts too. My oldest is in 9th this year. One thing I have heard is that you have to remember credit hours are not actual classroom hours. That is a year-long class in a regular ps counts as a a full credit but it is alomost never an hour long class. Usually 50 or even down to 40 minutes plus a lot of that time is wasted. I don’t think we need to feel bad that we get things done more quickly. That is one of the benefits of homeschooling. Personally, I plan to count things for which we use any sort of curriculum as “you finish the curriculum, you get credit for a year’s course.” For other things, like this year my son is reading a lot of American poets and short story authors, I record what he is doing and then may combine it with other things in the future. That is, I could just call it a 1/2 credit course itself but if we do some other kind of literature in another year or two, I will lump them together and call them “American lit” or some such.
Exactly, Nebby. I plan to do the same for picture and composer studies and other things that spill over between years.
That’s what I did (my first just started college this year). So Apologia Chem was 1 credit. History – I made a book list, added some narrations and other papers and counted it as a credit.
I did decide to write out his transcript in a way that would be familiar to the schools he applied to. So one math per year, one history per year, one English per year, etc. Even though he frequently finished faster or occasionally slower or did them in other orders (like two history one year, two science another). Just seemed like it would be accepted easier if it was in their “form”.As far as planning for what to do, I would keep in mind what is required esp if they want to go to college but a lot of the planning is the same as you’ve always done. If you finished pre-algebra, you go on to algebra. If you are ready for Modern History that’s just want you do next. I was panicked when we first got there but then realized it was just a bit more organization that was needed but the planning was pretty much the same as was the way we did things.
I do agree with Nebby. I kept the 120 hours per credit in mind but also kept in mind that the public schools were frequently not doing 120 hours plus their classes frequently weren’t as “rich” as far as the books and other things that were included. I compared it to my education in public school and called it good when he reached a level at or higher than that (mostly higher).
My son is now doing quite well in school. He’s actually amazed at the low level of some of the class he has had to take for basic requirements. For example, he’s in second semester English and they are spending time on how to fix sentence fragments and run-ons and how to write outlines. We didn’t spend much time on that but he knows already! He’s also more thankful for the years of homeschooling esp when I comment “yep, that’s public school for you”. : )
-Rebecca
I agree with all the posts but loved seeing it thought through. Many thanks. I really agree with the idea that it seems a lot more abstract and daunting than it actually is once you wrap your mind around it more. However, I see areas I’ll pay better attention too as well.
Up to this point I’ve designed our courses and I think that this fact gave me pause when I originally posted. I wished I’d had a little more foresight is all. I think I would have structured things I bit differently.
For example, in our elementary and first years of middle school I would do a 3 term year with a different science each term. That was lovely and interesting but I might have chosen different sciences if I had been thinking of our high school science years as being one science per year and no terms.
Our terms are fast disappearing except that they roughly indicate changes in our fine arts studies and are used to monitor overall yearly progress in our book lists for various subjects.
Another aside to this discussion for me is the idea of record keeping. I started homeschooling by generally following the SCM model for planning our year until the level of terms. I would then sketch out my subjects to cover on each day and simply record what we actually did that day in my calendar. In this way I was able to remain very fluid and look at the completion of our week’s work in terms of a week versus a daily check list or other detailed view. This helped me because I’m a big fan of enjoying homeschooling at the expense of formal schooling. If we have an opportunity then I will rarely deny it, but instead incorporate it and do lighter versions of lessons to see that the week’s overall goals are generally met. This works for me because I’ve only lived in Florida and Louisiana where there are very little to no requirements for record keeping and yearly evaluation.
Our later middle school years startled me in to thinking I needed more detailed accounts of what we were doing each day. I tried the SCMO. It’s a great product, as are many of these more detailed record keepers, but not necessary for us. So I’ve dropped back to doing even less record keeping than the “prior to planner” years. I now just keep track of our having done our lessons for the week and if I find we haven’t for all those varying reasons we all know, then I just tack a note to the next week to plug in anything we’ve missed.
In this way I think I’m keeping the hours pretty well to claim the 120 – 180 range needed for the various high school courses. And here I agree wholeheartedly that what I cover and accomplish in my 30 minute science lesson is at least equivalent to the hour spent in a school setting and probably more productive in fact.
In my original post I was also thinking largely on content for high school courses. This primarily because I’m designing them myself and want them to be competitive or exceed equivalencies.
It is a shame that so little variety is required for high school graduation.
I’m not sure I will “package” a variety of subjects/courses/activities together though. I’m not sure I won’t either. I somehow like the idea of showing off the rich variety of their educations. But agreeing that the thousand page transcript is ridiculous too. This is will be an area of consideration as we move forward. I like the idea of designing the year so that these extra subjects/courses/activities were well blended, thoughtfully integrated or nicely complimentary in their combinations for a final credit.
Again, much thanks. It’s nice we are all heading in this direction together. I do hope we will all continue to post together as things arise and we find or seek solutions.
I apologize this was such a long post. I tried here to reply logically. I re-read my original post and was a little embarrassed at its scattered thought process. I’m fighting every viral known to man down here this season and I’m afraid the meds get the best of my little gray cells!
It has been a doozy of a sick season here in FL, too, Claire! You might be interested in the Comprehensive Record Solution described at TheHomeScholar.com. I’m not sure you need to buy anything, but the ideas are interesting.
Interesting. There seems to be something to how you keep records and the various scholarship requirements of the colleges and others. That’s something to keep in mind.
I do find that I am happy that although I don’t keep very detailed records myself of what they do each day in their lessons, each child has their work as their proof from each course. I keep their work subject by subject. Depending on the subject and their age, it might be just a file folder or it might be a notebook or a three ring binder. It would be a little work to sit down and review the year’s work and pull together a detailed course description but it doesn’t seem impossible. I think that might be our path since the assignments and daily details are not recorded elsewhere for us. Although all of that isn’t necessary on a course description either.
I did worry about this aspect of how we are operating. I will probably still want to or need to tweak it some. I just don’t usually sit down and take the time to write out everything I’ll do during that lesson on that specific day. It sounds like I’m wildly unorganized but I’m not at all. I’m just not a teacher and I don’t do lesson plans! It just wouldn’t happen that way for us and I’d be so frustrated by having written it out and then having done something different. There would be serious eraser expenditures around here!
I guess I should mention that we don’t do separate lessons here except for the subjects of math and foreign language. Everything else is done together with variety for the age differences coming in the form of problems, assignments, expectations of narrations and discussion. That’s a variation from the norm in CM middle and high school, I think.
Here are some more interesting links for transcripts …
https://www.hslda.org/highschool/docs/SampleTranscript.pdf
http://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/69395.pdf
Here is a link with a lot of information that some might find helpful … I remember a homeschooling conference really promoting “course descriptions” as a means to validate courses or offer more detail for colleges on what exactly the student covered in the course. I think there is a sample of one here.
http://www.hslda.org/highschool/academics.asp
I am really leaning toward wanting to show what we actually did each year of our CM high school. I don’t think it would add too much detail to the transcript. I would combine the music studies – hymn, composer, folksongs – in to Music Appreciation; the arts – poet, picture, shakespeare, handicrafts – in to Fine Arts. Possibly. Just initial ideas. But to show variety in some way. Shakespeare, if it was done seriously with work and not just as an exposure, would be well worth showing as a course in my opinion. I certainly don’t want to curb any of our efforts by molding my beautiful, rich CM education in to blahville.
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