Homeschooling: Standards

Oh. My. Word. is it ever hot here. I got my garden work done early, again – just picking beans/peas. I’m in bare-basics mode, as it’s just too hot. Picking, deadheading here/there, and killing bugs. The rest can wait til next week when the temps go down (way down – by 20 degrees!). We had wraps and cherries and banana milkshakes for dinner. That helps, as does sitting down here in the cool basement.

Question: What is the standard you teach to?

Short Answer: I don’t pay all that much attention to standards.

Long Answer: I don’t pay that much attention to standards, because I’m not planning to have my kids re-integrate into public school until 9th grade (if then), which is kind of a “start over” year, because it’s the first year of high school and transcripts. So, assuming all goes as planned, it doesn’t really matter if they do things in 5th grade that other kids are doing in 7th, or vice versa. For people who are homeschooling only for a year or two, I would definitely get an idea of what years the school covers various subjects. For example, we just finished an 18-month study of Ancient History. The middle school where I live is doing Ancient History for sixth grade. It’d be kind of a bummer for Madelyn to go to school & have to do it there, but it would hardly be the end of the world, either.

That said, I did do a massive amount of reading re: elementary education when I first started, and have continued to do more as we go along.

I used The Well-Trained Mind for curriculum and “what kids might learn when” types of information. Also Home Learning Year by Year by Rebecca Rupp for the same kinds of information.

I actually want to go back and look to see what WTM has to say about middle school. Right now I’m reading Homeschooling the Middle Years – just started it, don’t know if I would recommend it yet or not.

I also studied the Maine Learning Results, the K-2 and 3-5 segments, occasionally reviewing them to see if the kids’ curriculums had covered the various points. I realized by the end of 4th grade, Madelyn had covered all but one or two for grades 3-5.

Now “we” have the Common Core State Standards. (Another reason I don’t strictly go by these standards – they’re always changing!) I plan to look at these as a guideline for middle school, though not elementary. Owen’s fine. You can find more information about them here – they’re what’s been adopted by many states in the country. I don’t really know what to make of the Common Core, from a teacher or student perspective. It makes me nervous that, like No Child Left Behind, it sounds good on paper but it won’t be funded at a level that makes it actually doable. Frankly it sounds like a nightmare for teachers.

Finally, I trust the curriculum we’re using to keep us mostly on track. We’re sticking with Saxon for math, and plan to keep using it. I expect their scope/sequence to match up fairly well with the public school’s plans. Any science, history, geography, foreign language that they get in elementary school is WAY more than most public school students get. So, that’s just gravy. We have a spelling program that I suspect is easier than the school’s, but I don’t think that matters – spelling will come as they read/write more, and have to correct things with spell check. Reading is fairly straight-forward: are they at grade level or not? Are they able to fluently read typical “grade level” books? Lists of graded readers and regular books that have been graded can be accessed online. If not, targeted instruction and/or simply waiting for the brain to mature while not killing the joy of stories and books may be the fix. I actually find writing to be the hardest to gauge – which mistakes and at what frequency are “normal” for various grades? I could tell you for high school, since I taught high school English, but I don’t really know for younger kids. My solution is to have them write a lot, and then pick some pieces to revise until they’re correct, even if it means me helping them quite a bit (after they’ve worked through it themselves). So those are my intutive checks.

Over time I’ve learned to relax quite a bit about these standards – I read in Free Range Learning that all the elementary school math that kids learn could (typically) be taught in about six months at the middle school level. And I think that’s probably not far from the truth.

Another way to think about it: potty training can take 18 months or more if a parent tries to get the child to reliably use the toilet before his/her body is ready – could be either physical or emotional immaturity that prevents the training from actually working – and it could be horribly stressful and not fun for all parties. Or, when a child is actually ready it could take a few days or a week. I say this from the voice of experience: poor Madelyn – I thought she was ready, but she wasn’t, and we definitely suffered. We mucked around on/off, trying to hit on what strategies might work, struggled & cleaned up many messes until randomly (while we were traveling!), it stuck, and she went from messes all the time, to none at all.

School learning is like that, too. No guideline or standard guarantees that any given child is actually developmentally ready to learn it, especially in early elementary school, but even later, too. Reading and math are such abstract concepts, when you think that a squiggle on a page equals a sound or numerical concept. Madelyn was most definitely not ready to read until she was 7. She caught up that year, was at grade level at age 8, and now reads ALL THE TIME and far beyond her grade level. If I had pushed her to learn (perhaps to little real effect), she may have rebelled and refused to read. Instead, we worked at it in little chunks, and mostly I read to her and let her listen to lots and lots of story cds. When she started figuring it out, she read lots and lots of easy books, often the same ones over & over again, practicing her new skills and gaining confidence. Meanwhile, she retained her love for stories, as she listened to the kinds of interesting books she wasn’t able to read yet, but was certainly able to comprehend & enjoy.