Our Homeschooling Journey | Quarter One Finally Done

Wake Me Up When September Ends

Last month, @hiveph initiated a contest asking what "wake me up when September ends" mean to them. Apparently, I was asleep the whole September (save for some occasional catch up session with my friends) because September was full of activities - homeschool and so much more - for me and my family. I wasn't able to join the contest but this is what it meant to me.

Our quarter exams week was scheduled on the last week of September. To my daughter, it means she'll have to answer the questions I made for her but to me, it means I'll have to prepare the exams ahead of time. The days and weeks leading to the exam week has been very busy for me. The days after that was used for grading not just the exams but also the written works and performance tasks we have done for the whole quarter.

I made it so that our first quarter will be done by the time September ends. September has ended, and I have already awaken. Looking back to our first quarter, I can say that we have accomplished so much! Listening to all her narrations, I can say that she's learned a lot. I sometimes catch her thinking very deeply about things, analyzing what she hears and draws her own conclusions and opinions about topics I myself sometimes don't mind. She's sometimes too witty to handle but I keep reminding myself that the reason we homeschool the way we homeschool is so that she can learn to think for herself reasonably, rationally, and factually for herself when she's an adult.

Exams

A good portion of the first quarter, I actually spent worrying about what exams I'll give to my daughter. I grew up learning through the traditional school, that means dreading the exams week, cramming the review, enduring moments of torment during the exams, and then worrying how I did once the exams is over. I've been dealing with stress even when I was young.

What do you think... vs. What is...

On each of her subjects, (except for Math), I only gave her 2-3 questions. I wanted to see if she does remember what we learned but more importantly, I wanted to see how she would analyze what she knows about the topics we discussed.

There is no distressing cramming for the term's examination. The pupils know their work and find it easy to answer questions set to find out what they know, rather than what they do not know.
-CM vol.3, p.301

For our Filipino subject, for example, I asked her: "Among the stories that we read, which one is your favorite?" She then goes on recounting the stories that we read. At this point, I am already grading her with how well she remembers the stories that we read. On the surface, I can see she's telling me the titles of the stories, but at the back of her head, her brain is already processing and pulling out all the information she can remember about each of the titles she mentions. Then when she tells me what was her favorite, (Papel de Liha) I then ask her to narrate it. This task puts her entire brain to work. She remembers the pictures, the events, the sequence of the events. I didn't even have to ask her what she thinks about it because towards the end, she told me how sandpaper feels like and how she feels about the story.

We did not go through review. If you remember my post about narration, you'll see that we never read a passage twice. This is so that we can form the habit of attention. Once they have formed that, children will make sure they listen, and when they do listen and understand, it will be hard to forget what they learned during that session. It will not always pop out of their heads everytime, but when it comes down to trying to recall what they know, it won't be too hard for them to pull that information from their brain.

Removing the stress of having to answer multiple questions (most of the time, traditional exams are up to 50 questions) of "What is the name of...." or "Where did this character......" or those yes or no questions, I and my daughter had a lot of fun during our exams week. There was no pressure, no tears, no sweat (except for her PE). It was pure bliss. This is the first time I ever heard of an exam like this. An enjoyable kind of examination.

Grading

Here now comes the clerical part of the job. I remember my teacher say before "I'm not the one making your grades, you are. I just record what you made." I did not believe her before. I always thought there are some sort of emotions being used when teachers mark our grades in our report cards. Now that I am the one "recording" my daughter's progress, one of the challenges I have is grading her works objectively.

I approached this task as objective as I possibly can but still maintaining a human touch in the system. I graded my kid according to several criteria. Our Homeschool provider gave us a guide which I pretty much use on all of her works that need to be graded.

• Remembering
  This is where her listening skills, attention to detail, focus, and retention is tested.

• Understanding
  When one listens, one can comprehend. The way she talks about the story, the questions she asks during our open discussion shows how much she understands and wants to understand more about the topic.

• Applying
  When I taught her the different brush strokes using the pointed paint brush, one of the things she mentioned is that she can now draw a sunflower because that's how the brush stroke looks like. Application of what she learned shows that she fully understood the discussion and she can easily use what she learned.
  

• Analyzing
  Our curriculum contains several books we digest everyday. On an average, we read up to 10 books per day. It almost seem like an overload. But when children are able to point out details from one book, relating it to another, and makes them analyze and form a relation for those topics, I also mark a grade for her on that aspect.

• Evaluating
  One of my daughter's free reads is the book 365 Bible Stories. It contains stories from the bible with pictures to make it appealing to kids. She read about the crossing of the Red Sea a long time ago. Then when she came to the story of the crossing of the River Jordan, she came to me saying, "Nanay, I'm reading about the parting of the Jordan River. I also read before about Moses parting the Red Sea. There are so many parting of waters here in the bible, it's like these stories aren't scientifically real." I am not an avid bible reader, nor a devout or a religious so we had a very open discussion about this.

• Creating
  Most of the time, her interpretation of the topic through her sketch narrations are what I grade her. She sometimes would re-enact it or just simply paint or draw her idea about the topics we talked about. I also add points to her grades when she does this.
• Attitude towards the task
  This to me is one of the most important part of my grading system. Attitude is everything.

Plan Again

Now it's officially the start of our quarter 2. Last July, I formulated a plan on how to carry out the yearly objectives for our homeschooling journey. Some parts turned out fine, some I had to tweak, there were ones I needed to remove entirely.

After patting ourselves on the back for a quarter 1 well done, we are now moving on the the 2nd quarter of the schoolyear. There are lots of lessons we learned, habits formed, and relationships strengthened in the last quarter for us. We hope to keep our ball rolling, and continue to improve and grow as we move along.

How about you? How was your 1st quarter? If you are in your exams week/month, how are you doing so far?