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High School Discussion: Ways to Increase the Difficulty Level
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This is another one discussion based around a disc from the new Living and Learning seminar. If you’ve not watched it chime in with your thoughts anyway! 😉
In part of the seminar Sonya talks about homeschooling high school. She explains that the methods stay very much the same but that we need to increase the difficulty level gradually. One example was to increase the reading level in books based on where your individual child is starting, without overwhelming them with too big a jump in difficulty. We continue narrations both oral and written but there is a critical thinking component now instead of a simple retelling of story.
With that as a background, let’s chat!
My first question is how do we increase the difficulty level for a child (and the length of time they’re working in a day because they’re ready for it) without getting kickback over it? Especially if there are younger siblings in the home with much shorter/easier workloads. At my house, for example, Makayla is heading into 8th grade and the closest child in age is heading into 4th. There is quite a difference. And they get younger from there (3rd, 1st, K, Prek, Prek, and toddler).
If you have a question go right ahead and post it in this thread too, and feel free to share your thoughts on my question or anyone else’s along the way!
You prevent kickback by talking to one of her friends, finding out her schedule (complete with homework and stuff in the evening) and make her do that for a day or a week. (I.e. she has to do English for 50 minutes, math for 50 minutes, and then homework at night!) Then you show her what you want her to do. 🙂
You’ll need to provide a space for work in the afternoons when the younger siblings are “done.” The children just have to understand that high school is harder than middle school is harder than elementary school is harder than preschool–it just is.
I’m not sure about the kickback question. I’m pretty much a tiger mom (remember that dreadful book?) in that I don’t care what they want to do; I simply need them to do what they’re asked to do. Sounds much more harsh than it is in our home. My kids are pretty careful not to get me on the “doing things you don’t want to do or don’t like to do” soap box. I love it up there!
My daughter is the same age as yours. We just started our ~8th grade year (year round schoolers) and I’ve increased her written narrations and added more critical thinking or literay analysis to her Literature narrations instead of the “tell all” type of narrations. Gone are the days of drawing, making a diarama, doing a skit, etc. for a narration on say a Science biography or any other book. So I guess I’ve change the list of possible ways to narrate for her now in order to step up her ability to really dig in to her studies more. I’ve also started to have more “discussions” (for lack of a better word/description) with her over her lessons. I like to really read her narrations and probe her thinking on what she’s read.
It has turned up an interesting “fluke/flaw/area needing work” in that we have both discovered she can better explain her position and defend her analysis orally than in a written form. It’s nothing we’re overly stressed about but it is interesting. So it’s an area we can work on now. The “tell all” narrations didn’t bring this to light. And obviously the oral narrations for Literature we’d always done in years past did not either. It’s different when you are writing to defend your answers using specific examples from the book, etc.
Right now I’m working on compiling that “new” list of possible narration questions or prompts for her. I liked having the list or bookmarks handy. I’m also working on a neat and regular way of asking her to explore the book more. I’d like her to read a little bio on the author now before she starts a book (unless of course it is a biography obviously). I’d like her to maybe read someone else’s interpretation or anaylsis of the work too. I haven’t yet figured out how to make this a regular part of her starting a book. Maybe to start out a printed sheet would prompt those investigations and then she’d start reading. Maybe I’ll have to ask for a narration of those investigations that begins the written work for the new book. Not sure.
Those are my incomplete thoughts on this for now. I’m sort of weed whacking my way through it … 🙂 I think some things will depend on personality and future goals too.
Claire – I think it makes sense that she can better explain and defend her position orally than she can when writing. Oral work takes the physical act of writing out of the equation so they have less taking up their thinking than when they are writing those same thoughts while moving a pen/pencil and making judgements on spelling, grammar, and punctuation. As the thoughts she wants to convey become more complex I can see where it would take a new adjustment period to bring the written narrations on par with the oral narrations.
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