heartofdakota.com

Does Heart of Dakota have a written out scope and sequence that is any more thorough/detailed than the table of contents or intro page for each title on the website?

StillJulie,

The "Introduction" in each of our guides goes through each box of plans in the guide and each subject area and gives an explanation of how it is handled and taught in the HOD guide. This is typically what is handed in to the state if needed for verification of what is being taught. Many, many families just print this out from our website and turn it in for reporting purposes. Each "Introduction" varies from 12-23 pages and really gives a great look at the various subject areas.

If further detail is needed, then you need to go to the Table of Contents of the various parts of the program to get a more in-depth view. For example, the Table of Contents in grammar and math are very helpful for more specific skills. The same is true for the opening pages of the DITHR guide (as well as the cover sheet that begins each genre) and for each of the writing programs scheduled in our guides.

For history, we always have spine books that have good Table of Contents for the topic coverage. The same is true for the science resources. Poetry is contained in the Appendix. Bible is explained in the Introduction and in the upper guides includes a separate Bible Student Book with its own Introduction and scope. Courses like composer study and nature study also have good overviews in their Table of Contents.

It's good to remember that the HOD guides are meant to guide you through the curriculum, and function like lesson plans, however they are not the curriculum. The curriculum is made-up of the books that are used with the lesson plans (or with the guide). That is why you need to go to the specific books to gain the scope of the materials used within the curriculum. This is true for all curriculums.

For example, during my public school teaching days, I was required to write lesson plans and turn them in each week. The plans did not ever include a scope and sequence but rather were required to include page numbers, procedures, questions or a way to assess the kiddos, and some sort of a key idea or lesson focus. This is what is contained within our lesson plans (or Teacher's Guides). The scope and sequence was instead contained in the individual pieces of the curriculum.

Blessings,
Carrie

Thank you, Carrie.

We are seriously considering a virtual charter school for next year. From all appearances, nothing significant would change in our day to day schooling, but there is a large financial incentive. In order for me to be "allowed" to use HOD, the director of the charter school has to show how the curriculum aligns with our state standards. She has been awesome at working through this for a variety of curriculum, but I'm the first to request HOD. She has already started working on HOD from the information on the website. I was just hoping I'd given her as much information as I could to make her job less tedious if possible.

I will do some searching on the message board here, but if anyone knows of threads that have discussed which titles have Christian content for the various guides, I'd appreciate links. Missions to Modern Marvels is my top priority for this, as I've used all the lower guides, so have a pretty good feel for those books.


Also, would you consider the unwritten in student notebook pages to be Christian? I'm trying to remember if there are Bible verses or such on them before the kids fill them out.


Thanks again!