Getting Started with Homeschooling
Practical Considerations for Parents of School-Aged Children
© Beverley Paine
Index
Homeschool
Australia
Part 9 Curriculum Check-Lists
Check-lists, like commercially available curriculums, offer a guide to devising learning programs for your children. Sensible practice will see them used not as the foundation of your programs, or strictly followed and marked off as attainment or assessment sheets, but as suggestions for activities, or where to go next with your child.
All of the check-lists contained in this part are taken and adapted from primary school education. Many parents will have gained the confidence necessary to devise learning programs for adolescents if they have home schooled their children to this age. There are many bookstores around Australia that stock high school text and student work books in traditional curriculum subjects, and curriculums are available. The Yellow Pages are a good place to start your search, and ask for a catalogue to be mailed to you if you live out of the city.
The author has always preferred to design teenage learning programs around real life activities and meaningful work, allowing the transition from childhood to adult working life to be gradual and natural (see example in Part 7). Voluntary work and adult education courses, particularly vocational or correspondence, are an excellent alternative to high school. These can be supplemented with well chosen texts or tutors in specific subjects. Entrance to tertiary education, at the age the young person is ready for it, can include traditional means, or the presentation of a folio of related work, interviews, and letters. A letter of assessment by the parent may help, with references from other people connected with the educational process.
There are many areas of learning not covered in these check-lists. It is hoped you will find, or devise, your own to supplement this selection. A variety of types of check-lists have been deliberately chosen. Education is never simply the attainment of knowledge or facts, it includes skills and understandings. Activity lists can stimulate your imagination, and one activity often leads to learning in new areas.
Share check-lists and curriculum information among friends, even if they did not work for you. Every home school is different, and individual children within families learn differently from one another.
Skills And Processes
Skills
| Has clear purpose, maintains clear purpose | Chooses an appropriate place to work |
| Keeps the purpose in focus | Cares for equipment |
| Is attentive | Is courteous |
| Makes appropriate use of all senses | Works methodically and patiently |
| See things objectively | Understand and uses symbols |
| Hears things objectively | Makes inferences |
| Speaks clearly | Uses and maintains equipment |
| Listens to others attentively | Uses colour and perspective |
| Contributes ideas and opinions | Summarises outcomes |
| Builds on others ideas | Analyses and interprets data |
| Prepares suitable questions | Selects appropriate materials |
| Records relevant data | Makes clear statements |
| Participates appropriate using verbal and non-verbal expression |
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Excerpt from Getting Started with Homeschooling, Practical Considerations
© Beverley Paine, 1997
