The basics of what to record for high school include:
- The name of the course
- The number of credits for that course
- A grade for the course.
- Course description.
Courses have a name in high school so that you can communicate to colleges, trade schools, the military and employers what the student actually studied. This is done through the high school transcript and the course description.
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For many courses, this is pretty straightforward. If your student is taking Algebra 1, the name of the course would be, “Algebra 1.” That course is usually a full year worth one credit (I’ll discuss that more below). This year, my daughter is going to be studying British literature, and I will call that course “British Literature” on her transcript. We are also going to be studying composition using Help for High School from Bravewriter, and Easy Grammar. I’m calling all of that “English 1.”
Sometimes, it’s a little more tricky. My son participated in cross country and track. Because runners really have to run all year round to keep in shape, he had many hours of running under his belt. On his transcript, I called this “Physical Education/Distance Running.” My daughter worked with her father on our rental house laying tile, hanging drywall, priming and painting walls, putting in windows, and setting a toilet. I called that “Housing Rehab” and gave her 1 credit.
Try to be as accurate as possible when you name a course. You want the course to reflect the unique experience you provided in your homeschool, yet you want to make sure it’s in a language that colleges, employers etc. will understand.
What’s a credit?
High school credits are based on Carnegie hours. I wrote about that back in 2001.
There isn’t a large concensus on how long a Carnegie Hour actually is. Some literature says 180 hours, some say as little as 90. In my state of Ohio, they have it spelled out at 120 hours. That would make a half credit class 60 hours. but when you consider approximaely 32 weeks in a school year, that’s a little less than 4 hours a week. If your student is spending an hour a day on science, for an example, then that will easily turn into 120 hours and one credit.
But what about a kid that just plows through his course work and gets it done quickly, without spending 120 hours on it? No problem. They shouldn’t be penalized for that. If they complete all the course work in one high school level text book, that is still one credit.
If a child is in a production, play, or other project (like my daughter’s flip house work) they may be spending a lot of concentrated time on one thing, but only for a few weeks. Just keep track of the time and award the credit accordingly. My child spends 2 1/2 hours a week in choir, which would be just shy of 1 credit. I will either give her a half credit or ask her to write a paper on one of the pieces they sing each semester. That should bring it to the total hours.
This is my favorite planner for high school. It keeps track of everything for four years and it’s a wonderful way to capture everything at a glance. I make my students responsible for keeping all of their records in it, though I verify. I also use a planner through Catholic Sistas
How do I give grades?
i know we homeschoolers don’t like to give grades. We want our kids to work on something until the understand the concept thoroughly and then move on. But in high school, grades are what colleges and others understand, so it’s important to judge the work or our students fairly.
I use a couple of criteria to grade my students.
- Do they do their work in a timely manner?
- Am I satisfied with their work?
- If I give tests with the course, what did they get on their tests?
- If this was an online class or co-op, what assessment did that teacher make?
I think Lee Binz gave the best and most accurate assessment of grading. In her book, Making the Grade she writes,
I have another method of grading assignments, which I call “The HomeScholar Factor of Confidence.” If your child meets your high expectations, then give them an A. If your child is doing pretty well but not really great, give them a B. If your child is not doing very well at all, but still moved on to the next level, and they seem to be doing all right with it, then you give them a C. If they’re somewhere in-between, you can certainly throw a dart on a number somewhere in-between. If it’s not quite an A but certainly better than a B, then you can give them a B +, or if you feel like it’s not really an A but it certainly wasn’t B work, then you can give them an A-.
Binz, Lee. Making the Grades: A Grouch-Free Guide to Homeschool Grading (The HomeScholar’s Coffee Break Book series 17) (Kindle Locations 255-259). . Kindle Edition.
I factor all of that stuff in when I make grades for my students.
Course Descriptions – Do I really need them?
I’ll be honest here, I didn’t always write them. But then I found out in May of my fourth son’s senior year that if he was going to play sports in college, he was going to need course descriptions for everything he did in high school starting in 9th grade. I worked round the clock for two weeks pulling all of that together. I learned a lot by doing them too.
Don’t be me! Write your descriptions every year, for every course. The beauty of this for big families is that once you write them, you can use them over and over again for all of your other students. Algebra 2 and biology don’t change that much!!
Tomorrow I’ll cover course descriptions in depth, transcripts, and other records to keep.
Wednesday I’ll cover what to teach.
Thursday the college entrace exams, ACT, SAT and post secondary.
