Ladies,
I am really pleased with the thinking process that this thread is taking all of us through and am enjoying the dialogue with so many interesting and very wise mommas!
There are many good point to ponder and much to consider, isn't there!
I have to admit that I have been thinking for months about so many of these things that you are bringing out in this thread too. I'll address a few here that have been brought up in the recent part of this thread.
I agree that a bulleted or numbered list of tasks is easier to follow than directions in paragraph form. But in the past, we've had to utilize the paragraph form of directions mainly for two reasons. The first is that it is a way to be able to fit much more information in a small space (box). This is because lists leave much white space at the end of lines and take up many more lines, which frankly I've just not had the space for in the boxes. The second (and less important) reason is that quite often in school type tasks, the directions do not come in list form. If you look at most teacher assignments as kiddos mature, you'll find the directions often given in multiple sentence or paragraph form.
If we did decide to go with much more abbreviated directions, then we could definitely consider a list form of directions instead. I'm just trying to weigh how clear abbreviated directions would be. I can really see in some cases that the directions in high school can be shorter and more concise. I can also see that we can do away with repetitive directions at this level.
For the boxes with questions to discuss or ponder though, there would be no way to get them all to fit when listing instead of in paragraph form. So, it may be possible to do it some of the time but not all of the time? At that point I'm not sure whether it would feel strange to slip in and out of two different forms in the boxes (some with bulleted brief directions and others more narrative)?
Another thing I am weighing is whether it is wise to keep any graphics for the boxes in the high school editions (like the corner graphics on the boxes, the stars by the resources used, the coding for Independent, Semi-Independent, and Teacher Directed).
This is another topic on which I'd love to hear your thoughts.
As far as scheduling a project to carry over onto subsequent days, I definitely think that is a viable option (as we have done it in our guides previously). However, I can see that the student possibly could take over some scheduling of that type of thing once the guide has given the assignment and number of days to work on the task with just a daily reminder in the box to work on the project. I'm not sure about beginning the first year of high school with that but I can see moving toward it as the years pass. I like this idea very much in theory, but I want to make sure that the student is accountable in practice. I think the initial adjustment to high school will be pretty big on its own without a ton of changes at once.
When thinking of dividing up the language arts box, I have definitely been giving that much thought as well. I was thinking that literature could be its own box possibly, with writing, grammar, and dictation in another box? We'll have to see, but I do think a division of tasks there would help, even though it will all fall under one category for credit.
This brings me to something else I've been going back and forth about as to how to schedule in the guide. In planning to offer several science options within our guide for each year of plans, this brings up a scheduling question along with it. For example, in the geography guide our current plan is to offer a choice of an integrated chemistry and physics course, a biology course, or the Exploration Education physical science advanced version (for those who may not have used it in Rev2Rev). In offering these three options, we can either schedule all 3 in the science box each day, or schedule all 3 in the Appendix of the guide, or sell each schedule separately along with the purchase of the corresponding science. Each option has its merits and all affect the design of the daily plan (especially as to whether there is room to divide up the language arts). So, I'd be interested in your thoughts on these options too.
Blessings,
Carrie
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