Last year before high school, any recommendations?

[Jane]

My oldest will be in 8th grade next year. I'm starting to get nervous about the high school years. Do you have any advice on what to make sure we accomplish before we begin high school? I have a college bound student.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom. :)

[Gwen in VA]

Well, everyone is different, but skills that my kids used a LOT in high school and we were glad that they were proficient in before high school --

1) Strong reading skills reading lots of different kinds of material -- not just fiction and biography, but nonfiction, periodical, news items (I know -- those aren't different "types", but you probably get the idea.......)

2) The ability to learn from a textbook. (It sounds obvious, but it's a skill that can be taught and needs to be learned. For some kids it's intuitive, but others really need to be taught this skill.)

3) A strong foundation in math. Before doing algebra 1, he should be extremely comfortable with pre-algebra concepts. Before doing algebra 2 he should be extremely domfortable doing algebra 1, etc. Check his foundational math skills.

4) Lots of stories from history. Somehow knowing some of history's great story lines helped put all the more detailed nitty-gritty of history in place more easily.

And this year do take time to smell the roses (or cuddle up in front of the fire reading or take that long nature walk looking up all kinds of bugs and trees or do that great big craft project.) High school is a bit of a wild ride, and we found much less free time available to do those types of fun family activities.

[HollyinNNV]

My oldest will be in 8th grade next year. I'm starting to get nervous about the high school years. Do you have any advice on what to make sure we accomplish before we begin high school? I have a college bound student.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom. :)

It is helpful to be able to write well and write fluently. That would be my number 1 concern. Math is a close second.
Holly

[newbie]

Make sure you have enough credits, I made mistake of doing it slow, and now paying the price.

[Jane]

Gwen, thanks for the amazing list! I teared up at your last paragraph about the additional busyness of high school. Your list looks likes a list of my daughter's strengths (yeah!). I agree, being able to read and learn from a textbooks is important. I think I will add more newspapers and periodicals to my daughter's reading list next year though. That was such a well thought point. :)

Holly, you hit on my daughter's weak point. :001_unsure: We're working on it. <sigh>

Jet, I'm confused by your post. Do you mean once we enter high school make sure we have a well thought out plan that includes the proper amount of credits?

[Laura K (NC)]

I found that the harder reading my son did before high school, the better off he was in high school lit. Pushing them a little harder in literature will pay off in high school. If nothing else, if a child has already read the Illiad in middle school, that's one less thing he will have to read in high school, and he won't have to spend the whole first semester of the freshman year reading Homer when there are so many other books to read from the ancients.

Definitely have a middle schooler write a paper with references. My son wrote a 5-page paper in 8th grade, and I wish I had had him write a shorter paper in 7th grade to prepare for that. I don't think it is too much work. It helps to teach time scheduling, how to do research, how not to plagiarize, how to tie paragraphs together into a larger coherent body, neatness, and precision.

[Jane in NC]

If nothing else, if a child has already read the Illiad in middle school, that's one less thing he will have to read in high school, and he won't have to spend the whole first semester of the freshman year reading Homer when there are so many other books to read from the ancients.



Agreeing with Laura here. My son read both the Iliad and the Odyssey in middle school. We had the "luxury" of spending time in 9th on the Aeneid--so glad we did. It serves as a foundation or is alluded to in so many works of literature. Yet I fear it might have been missed if we had had to spend time on Homer.

I will add another thing to your list: introduce the concept of a lab report. Well written lab reports are hard for students to do initially. Students need good observation skills, but must also understand that science can be tedious in its minutia. In 7th and 8th, I would have a student run some experiments where data is recorded and then perhaps analyzed via a spreadsheet (that way your student knows how to use Excel or a similar product). I would have your student make sketches of what he is observing. Verbalizing observations in a report form is not automatic. Talk through the descriptions.

As math gets harder, students need to show their work. Ask your student to show work even on the "easy" problems of his pre-algebra and algebra program. If a student cannot write up the steps of an easy problem, he will freeze when given more challenging problems.

Finally, remember that hormones rule on some days. Students will be unproductive for a day or five. Don't fuss too much--take advantage of the moments when Clear Thinking rules!

Good luck,
Jane

[Wildiris]

I will add another thing to your list: introduce the concept of a lab report. Well written lab reports are hard for students to do initially. Students need good observation skills, but must also understand that science can be tedious in its minutia. In 7th and 8th, I would have a student run some experiments where data is recorded and then perhaps analyzed via a spreadsheet (that way your student knows how to use Excel or a similar product). I would have your student make sketches of what he is observing. Verbalizing observations in a report form is not automatic. Talk through the descriptions.


How did you achieve this goal? What are the texts or curriculum you used, and what were some of the projects you did?

Thanks,
Wildiris

[Jane in NC]

How did you achieve this goal? What are the texts or curriculum you used, and what were some of the projects you did?

Thanks,
Wildiris


We used one of the Jason curriculum projects (Wetlands) that integrated observation, measure, hypothesis writing, etc. Jason has been revamped so I cannot speak to the new program.

I also think that Hewett's Conceptual Physics is a great curriculum which can be undertaken in either 8th or 9th. Students read the text, answer questions and perform calculations, as well as do experiments. We used the lab manual for the latter. Several of the experiments required repeated measures over time which were noted and then put in Excel.

At an earlier age, we worked on data collection. What lives near you that you can study? In our case it is fiddler crabs. Male fiddler crabs have one enlarged claw--sometimes the right and sometimes the left. We undertook a field study to count fiddlers (females, right handed males, left handed males) in different locations, graphing the data. I am a firm believer in back yard and community studies. Counting migratory birds or performing the Audubon Christmas count is a good basic project. There are also groups that ask for help with counting butterflies.

Hope this helps.
Jane

[Karin]

Finally, remember that hormones rule on some days. Students will be unproductive for a day or five. Don't fuss too much--take advantage of the moments when Clear Thinking rules!

Good luck,
Jane

Thank you so much for sharing this. I've been getting so tired of people IRL telling me that that shouldn't make any difference for my 13 yo, and I was beginning to wonder if I was giving in too much to this stuff.

It's one of the beauties of homeschooling. I now plan "easy" school days to coincide to certain times of the month. "Easy" days mean days when the most loathed subjects are not on the list because I know hormones will be raging. We might spend a couple of days on art, logic, science etc, with no Algebra or English. .