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Record keeping...the million dollar homeschool question!
I go over-board in this area, but I will scale back my obsession with
"anal-list making" and keep in mind that most people do not enjoy
keeping
records! Back to my classroom days for a second: (back to YOUR
classroom
days for that matter) in Grades K-3 the only "record keeping" any
building
school mom ever gets to "cry over" is a report card, and on that report
card
some general skills are listed (plays well with others, recognizes all
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capitol letters, etc.) as well as subject areas: Math, Reading, Music,
etc.
How are these areas assessed K-3? Usually with three letters: N, S, O
Needs Improvement, Satisfactory, Outstanding. The only person who cares about the record keeping is the current classroom teacher and next year's classroom teacher (she wants to see what she's inheriting--but even then, she can get a quicker take by just chatting with her colleague in the teachers lounge.) Still, those "report cards" get stored in each child's Cumulative File (Cum File for short.) Those Cum Folders follow your child from Grade School to Middle School to High School and then they disappear into some record keeping warehouse somewhere. When a student transfers or moves in from out of the district, the Guidance Counselor makes hard copies, or faxes copies (or sends them electonically I bet now) to the "new school." Kids transfer so much more often now than when we were young--divorced families, job changes, etc. When/if you ever send your homeschooled children into a building school, they would treat you like a "transfer" student and ask for the following basic information: (disclaimer: this is what the schools I worked for as a Guidance Counselor would have wanted, every public school district is different--the bigger the school district the less picky they are going to be--and they HAVE to take any student who lives in their district.)
I would suggest coming up with something that serves two purposes (record keeping wise). A - it provides you as a homeschool teacher with a record of what you covered with one child so that you can refer back to it when your next childs reaches that level and ALSO something that meets the PI-1206/DPI "requirements" (cover those subject areas for sure) AND B - something that you could use to tell some Guidance Counselor some day exactly where your son/daughter is at academically in case you need to transfer your "students" to a different/building school setting. Rather than making a list of the subject areas and simply listing S, N, or O or giving A's, B's and C's , I personally think it's more helpful to list the texts/materials you used and to list the concepts you covered (see table of contents). I have samples of how I've done this so far--it's a lot of typing up front, but it's paying off all ready, because now when I'm getting ready to "do Kindergarten" with Bridget, all I need to do is review what I did (progress report) with Drew. There is absolutely no need to keep all those fill in the blank workbooks....except that some kids DO like to look through them (Drew for example took great pride in revisiting his MCP-K Math Book this year as Bridget was working her way through it.) A more practical idea would be to attach a few pages to your Progress Report to satisfy the curiosity of a Guidance Counselor would would like to see a SAMPLE of what your child did in Math, Reading/Phonics, Social Studies and Health....in teacher terms, these work samples are called a "port-folio." Here is a web site on record keeping for homeschoolers...Donna Young's Homeschool Printables and Resources. (Contributed by Mary F. from WI) Note from Webmaster: Be sure that you are covering your own state's requirements in this area. |
