Sunday, August 18, 2013

High School Schedules DONE!

A shot of W-F for Quarter 2 of Greek Lit.  For an explanation of why this is even here....see the previous post.


     
  Quiz 4 Discuss 4
     
     
  Paper 4, Quiz 5 Discuss 5
  Thanksgiving Break
  Study Sheet 6, Quiz 6 Discuss 6
     
  Outline 7, Quiz 7 Discuss 7

Part of my color coded high school schedule

I've been at it all week (first mistake...usually I start this process in June!) and I finally completed my semester 1 schedules for my 9th and 10th graders. It helps a lot that they are in many of the same classes - gotta love St. Thomas Aquinas Academy for that!   (My 9th grader is moving right into "10th" grade Greek Studies with my 10th grader.  She'll continue with him until he graduates and then when she is in 12th grade she will finish with their typically 9th grade American History Studies - the one she is skipping over for now).

I ran across someone making color coded school schedules at Shower of Roses blog.  I saw it an was intrigued.  I knew it wasn't going to work exactly the same way for us, but I loved the idea.  In addition to the color coding (Suz...if you're reading this....I can't help it...I must have your colors too...) I've always color coded our schedules to some degree.  The standard here is:  if it's printed in black it's solo work, anything in red is to be done with me, and items printed in blue are group work.   This year I added something extra...italicized orange for optional extra credit assignments. 

When I saw the color coded schedules online I liked the way it was easy to see, at a glance, what was to come and if they were falling behind in something.  I used to have each week's worth of assignments on 1 page.  But, if they struggled with something and I needed to slow them down, I'd be A) flipping back to old lists or B) continually adjusting their lists or C) make the lists so vague we didn't really have a good feeling for where we were in the subject.   Last spring, many of our 9th grader's classes finished early (co-op classes) and he asked for a complete listing of everything he had left.  Since he had more time available he wanted to double up on things and get done with school early.  It worked well.

So, tomorrow, my high schoolers will be given a packet for 1st quarter and a packet for 2nd quarter, each 4 pages.  They will clearly see where they are heading in their classes (I hope anyway!) and what is expected.  Their Greek Studies classes (Greek History, Greek Lit, Greek Essays, and Old Testament) have their own full lesson plans from STAA and it's simply too much to fit into a schedule like this, so for those classes I simply filled in dates assignments are due.

I'm a little too excited here.  I just might wake them up right now...or not.  I ended up color coding the weeks (rather than the quarters) to tie the them together.  It's easier to glance down and see what is assigned for all the "orange" weeks rather than search for Week 5 or the dates.

8/19-8/23 Gather Materials
8/26-8/30 Become very familiar with the book
9/2-9/6   Read 4-5 w/Mom & Em Read 146-148 & 18-19  w/Mom & Em Make FANBOYS card Make copies of tests to use
9/9-9/13 Do I, c/c, I Test p.149 Rework I, c/c, I section if test not 91% or higher Retake test if needed
9/16-9/20 Do I Sub I Test p.150 Rework I Sub I section if test not 91% or higher Retake test if needed
9/23-9/27 Do Sub, I,I Test p.151 Rework Sub I,I  section if test not 91% or higher Retake test if needed
9/30-10/4 Do I;I Test p. 152 Rework I;I  section if test not 91% or higher Retake test if needed
10/7-10/11 Study I;c/a,I p. 52 and define c/a on back of FANBOYS card      Do page 53
10/14-10/18         Do page 54




Saturday, August 10, 2013

Sibling "assignment"

I just have to share this because I thought it was such a great idea that other people might like to consider doing it themselves.   I had nothing to do with it.  I don't know if my husband thought of this on his own or not....but here you go.

He gathered ALL the children together and handed them each a piece of paper that had all the kids' names on it.   He instructed them to think of the nicest thing they could say about each of their siblings and write it next to their name.  Spelling didn't matter, he wanted them to do it alone.  (I did write down our 5 year olds answers for him though...word for word...)  They were instructed to not over think this, it shouldn't take long.  The next day he gathered all the papers and typed all the responses up in such a way as to be able to hand each child a list of the nice things said about them...anonymously.   I think it not only helped the child who received the list of all the nice things said about them.  It also helped, when writing the answers, to step back and think of something really nice about each individual sibling.

He plans to do this again; how frequently he plans to do this, I don't know.