Freshman curriculum choices
Parents, first thing you want to take care to create a high school curriculum for your freshman is find textbooks for the four core courses: English, Algebra I, world geography, and physical science or biology.
After that, you will want to discuss with your child what other courses to take.
A Word About Choosing A "Quality" Curriculum
Here is the "not to worry" speech about homeschooling your high schoolers. Parents, please don't worry about your final decision on materials or textbooks that you choose for your child. WHY?
- Regardless of the textbook you choose, it will cover the basic precepts every 9th grader will learn. (Notice that I didn't say "needs to learn" or "should learn" because honestly, that's arbitrary.)
- A wide range of material is covered in high schools, but it is very shallow (a big criticism of the schools, by the way).
- Students will retain very little of what they are taught anyway. (So much irrelevant material -to the student- is taught that they only bother to regurgitate it on exams. It rarely stays in their long-term memory banks.)
- You, the parent, are an infinitely better teacher than any public school and a lot better than many private schools. Remember, that's why you pulled them out or never put them in.
Just The Facts, Ma'am.
Not exactly positive comments about the process of choosing a freshman curriculum, but they are TRUE.
Today, teachers are told what, when, and how quickly they have to teach material. They have to stay on track and march through "the material" whether it's acquired or not.
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The scope and sequence of all educational materials is determined by a committee of teacher representatives, approved by the district, and is disseminated to teachers. How well the lesson plans are executed is determined by the size of the class, the teacher's experience and capabilities, her skill with adolescents, and her classroom management skills. How The Publics Do It! |
If the material isn't learned, the teacher hopes that the percentages of other quizzes on other material will even out the grade so the student passes the class; otherwise, the teacher will have to give "extra credit" to bring the student's grade to passing. The "extra credit" will not necessarily cover the material NOT passed during the term.This is true of all classes, even art.
All these factors indicate how well the material will be taught. However, none of this is important either because when the public schools kids take their "high stakes tests" to graduate, basically they will be judged for how well they read, not the six or seven questions on physical science that they studied three years ago.
The main challenge that high school students face today is how to read math word problems, history and science passages.
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World Geography |
Biology |