The Homeschooling Handbook_ From Preschool to High School - Mary Griffith [70]
If you’re an unschooler, you’ll quickly find that you can redefine your entire life as educational experiences. Going out to play can be socializational development and physical education, grocery shopping becomes consumer math and nutrition education, completing household chores develops concentration and time-on-task skills, and library trips are research instruction and resource identification.
Translating everyday activities into education jargon can also be reassuring to unschooling parents who worry that their children are “doing nothing.” Putting life into educational terminology makes it obvious that they are doing a great deal and that we are just not good at recognizing learning that takes place outside the classroom.
When I get paranoid I pull out diagnostic tests and books like Science Scope and What Your Child Needs to Know When. I do that less and less the more we homeschool, however. Other than perhaps checking off the skills that the kids know, I don’t keep records—although I do intend to start.—Peggy, Oklahoma
Many homeschoolers who must provide curriculum plans to get approval to homeschool each year find a “scope and sequence” useful. Simply an outline of what topics and skills are typically covered at each grade level, a scope and sequence can provide a structure on which to build your curriculum plan. Most are general enough that a workable plan can be developed even for those homeschoolers who, because they let their kids’ interests prompt study of particular topics, are unwilling to lay out too much curricular detail in advance. Dozens of sources are available for such outlines: encyclopedia companies, state and county offices of education, teacher college libraries, teacher supply stores, Internet databases, and homeschool suppliers.
Many homeschoolers find such books as the Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills or E. D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Series (e.g., What Your First Grader Needs to Know) useful as curriculum outlines. It’s important to recognize, though, the limitations and biases of such volumes. Their everything-in-one-volume approach means that facts and rote memorization are emphasized to the detriment of understanding the context and relevance of the topics covered. The Hirsch books especially are heavily weighted toward a Western European worldview, and events and culture of other parts of the world are treated only superficially.
Standardized Testing
Possibly no topic arouses such mixed feelings among homeschoolers as standardized testing. Diagnostic tests, readiness tests, screening tests, aptitude tests, achievement tests, IQ tests, placement tests, admissions tests—the list is almost endless, but the tests we usually mean when we talk about the kinds of standardized tests homeschoolers deal with fall into three main categories:
1. Aptitude tests (also known as IQ tests or cognitive ability tests): These tests attempt to determine the student’s innate ability or intelligence, to define what the student is capable of. Examples are the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children-Revised (WISC-R), the Stanford Binet Intelligence Scale, and the Differential Aptitude Test (DAT).
2. Achievement tests: These tests attempt to determine what a student has learned in specific subject areas, such as reading and math. Examples include the California Achievement Test (CAT) and the Iowa Test of Basic Skills (ITBS).
The last standardized test Shauna took was in first grade while we were with an ISP. Her adviser pushed us into doing it. I have said, “No, thanks,” every time that standardized testing has been offered to either girl since. Shauna scored from fifth- to eighth-grade level in all areas, and the ISP adviser wanted her to be the poster