heartofdakota.com

We plan to use the "Preparing Hearts For His Glory" guide this next school year. I was wondering if someone could point me to a previous thread or give me some guidance on how you grade the "Learning Through History" side of things in your school?

Thanks!

Does your state require you to report grades for students, even in elementary?

The "learning through history" and the storytime boxes would be difficult for me to assign grades to. In History you would use the oral narration, written narration, or maybe answers to the discussion questions to base any grades on. There are checklists in the back of the guide for oral or written narration, what the child is supposed to do, and the box itself gives gradual guidance on what is expected.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=15053&p=106333

This is how one person said she does it for high school purposes. It seemed like a pretty fair way to do it.

However I would encourage you to think about whether or not it is necessary to grade at this level. As suggested in the back of the guide, I do give my DD tips or ideas I want her to work on, either for next time, or sometimes we revise the written narration if it is not complete enough. They suggest work on one area at a time so they can really improve and not be overwhelmed. So the goal is doing their best and showing improvement in various areas, from completeness to spelling. I would hate for my child to feel like she is not doing well enough when in fact she is just learning and growing in her narration skills.

Melissa - Thanks so much for the reply. No, our state does not require grades but our cover school does. I agree with you on the grading thing. This is our 1st year to use Heart of Dakota so I was just curious how you all use it when there are grades involved. One more quick question for you... You mentioned checklists in the back of the guide. Am I overlooking those? I do not see them. ??? Thanks!!

I use homeschool helper on the nook. They have options for assignments to be graded under 3 categories daily, quiz, or test. I assign daily 25%, quiz 25%, and test 50%. With HOD I mostly put everything under daily and I am using the free printables under yahoo groups since I have an older ds using Preparing (he has dysgraphia/dyslexia). So the oral narrations and most of those type assignments go under daily, written narrations go under quiz, projects go under quiz or test. It is my rough rule of thumb for it all. I use the check rubric to assign my grades.
http://www.ourtidbitsoflearning.blogspo ... ading.html
I can take some screen shots of my actual grading of Preparing on homeschool helper once my nook charges.
We have to turn in report cards yearly and I printed all mine from homeschool helper and they were excepted without any issue. I just keep my nook handy and put it in as we go every day.

In the appendix, after the Bibliography and Science lab page, is the Narration tips, teacher's list and student's tips and then the Written Narration teacher's list and student tips. Again, this would be progressive, they need not have mastered all of these when first starting. Instead you would have them narrate (it helps my DD when I tell her beforehand she is narrating) and then you would pick one of the areas to focus on for improvement or to have them think through. Well, the pages themselves describe better than I will what is expected. But grades could also be based on this.