Anyone switched FROM BJUP's 10th gr. World History?

[Sparrows-Song]

We have never used BJUP materials before (except a few Booklinks when ds was much younger.) Ds is now in 8th grade and taking World History for a highschool credit. We are 7 weeks into the school year, and he is struggling with BJUP's World History.

He reads just fine, completes the Section Quizzes, and we go over the Chapter Review before each test. However, the tests seem to overwhelm him and he is bombing them.

Just wondering if anyone has switched from BJUP to something else and had more success? History is ds's favorite subject, so I'm wondering if the curriculum is what's bogging him down, or if he is just not ready for highschool history. We've used TOG for the past 3 years, but for various reasons, can't continue it into highschool. Perhaps BJUP was too big a jump for us?

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

[Sparrows-Song]

bump.

Anyone?

[NancyL]

History can be a pretty hard subject even for good readers. Those books are probably harder than the regular high school books (non AP) He's probably just not ready for the synthesis that you have to do for history. When mine was in 8th we used some textbooks I found around at thrift stores or whatever (I didn't know that much) and just had her answer the section questions and chapter reviews in writing. Some books had websites with multiple choice graded questions. Really, that was plenty!!!

I don't know how important it is to call it a high school course, but you could call it AP prep, because for the second year he would have a pretty easy time when you did the AP World. Or you could go to a dual credit course at a college or distance ed. LSU has a lot of distance college courses for $250 each. (3 credits)

It turned out the textbooks I used were some freshman level college texts. She could read them, answer questions, but she wouldn't have been ready to be tested on them.. But it really helped her, because I thought the eighth grade books were at a low reading level. If the student likes the book OK-just finish it and plan to do it later on in high school, or specialize in certain history like Medieval or European if he doesn't want to repeat World. The Teaching Company has great history courses that are pretty interesting and they have bibliographies. HTH

[Susan C.]

Here is how I did BJU World Geography, and it is laid out exactly the same as their World History (which we are going to do the last half of after Vol. 1 Streams of Civilization):

Do all section reviews and the chapter review. I glance at the test and compare it to the terms and questions in the chapter review, also look at the activities and see if there is a review there. I told dd to study the chapter review, the activity book review (if necessary), and made a post it of other things on the test that needed to be studied. I also gave her a day or two to do the review and study for the test. The prep helped her get good grades, and also taught her how to study when it is a "fact cram." It was hard at first because it was the first time she did a textbook rather than just reading and discussing history. But it didn't take her long to get the hang of it.

HTH

[Christy B]

We dropped BJU World History because it was an OVERWHELMING amount of information, much of which seemed to emphasize world view.

I'm disappointed, it was one of the few things that I'd bought brand new, the whole package -- it looked wonderful to me, but as the other posters have mentioned, dd was not ready for the synthesis of information (she is a VERY concrete thinker) *and* I do not personally care for the BJU perspective on religion and world view. Those things combined made it a very poor fit for us.

That said -- dd is math and science oriented, and has absolutely no intention or interest in any advanced placement history courses.

I have struggled to find a replacement curriculum; I'll probably end up putting something together myself with all sorts of bits and pieces.

[Sparrows-Song]

Thank you all very much. I have ordered Notgrass World History and will switch to that when it comes in.

Thanks again!