Hours, lessons and credits.

I have had conversations with some of my homeschooling friends concerning awarding credits for classes and how to determine what a credit is. Some of these conversations have gotten rather heated, especially by those who seem to think that you have to have credits in order to get into college. Not so. But I won’t go into that. That’s a whole ‘nother subject altogether! I found some interesting information regarding what an “hour” is and what might be considered a “credit”. Sounds reasonable to me, especially since that's the way I’ve been doing it all this time. But some people you just can’t convince that they are the ones who decide what an “hour” and/or “credit” is. They are determined to follow what the public school system says is an “hour” and “credit”. As for me and my house, we choose to follow the homeschool way!

Requirements.
As a homeschooler in Texas, you legally have to teach reading, spelling, grammar, mathematics and a study of good citizenship. Other states require that you teach the “core subjects”. What do they mean by “core subjects”? In most states those subjects would be science, social studies, language arts, math, etc. In Texas the public schools are required to meet 180 days per year and students must attend school for 170 days. This does not apply to homeschools. Texas also does not require you to teach a minimum amount of hours in a day. Some states require that you log hours for the school year. What does that mean? In some states the “hours” must be logged in each of the “core” subjects during that school year. Some require that your student must have 1000 hours total of logged “class time” to complete a full school year.

Logging.
Now “to log” means to record that a “lesson was completed”. To “log an hour” of class time is to record in a ledger or log book that the student has successfully completed the lesson in that subject that was assigned for that day. Remember, an “hour” is not necessarily 60 minutes of time. The class could take 10 minutes; 20 minutes; or 1 ½ hours. You are just verifying that “legally” the child completed the assignment.

So where does the 1000 hours come in—well, let’s say that you take your child to choir or band—you record that your child attended the class. You can then also record each time the child practices. If you do “art” projects or take lessons—that can be part of the 1000 hours. If you take a field trip—mark that as well (the way to mark a field trip is the time it takes from when you leave the house until you return). If your student only does 1 or 2 other subjects that day (and they normally have 8 subjects) log the field trip as “6 hours”.

“How” to log the hours.
You need to understand what an “hour” is. The word “hour” does not necessarily refer to actual minutes of an hour—but refers to a “complete daily lesson”. For instance, if you were teaching your student in mathematics, you would have a set lesson to teach your child that day. If your child learns and does the work in 3 hours, or in 3 minutes, it makes no difference—the “hour” refers to the completed lesson for that day. You have to get past the idea that you are clocking–in and clocking-out, as if you were on a time card. What if your child does not understand the material and they work for several hours and still do not understand it? Just as in the public school, “hours” are not just determined by whether a child masters a lesson, but is determined beforehand by the instructor. There is a difference between mastering a lesson and completing it. I will explain: you can spend 1 week on a particular lesson in math and that would be “logged” as 5 separate lessons (or hours) even though you were working on 1 lesson in the math book. On the other hand, you might have the opposite situation— your child handily finishes an assignment in 15 minutes, instead of taking 45 minutes to an hour. Can that be logged as “1 hour”? Yes it can. They have successfully completed the assigned lesson for the day. The critical idea is that “hours” refer not only to time spent in a subject, but also material covered. And an “hour” specifically means a predetermined lesson assigned for that day’s work. Who does the predetermining? YOU do.

How much is a lesson?
How do you find out “how much is a lesson”? Here’s a very easy method—look at the textbook you will have your student use. Find the last page of the “text” in the book. Take that number and divide it by 150. The answer will be the number of pages that should be covered each day (the number of pages for each lesson). Since the student should be in class 180 days in a school year (a normal school year), by dividing by 150 you have 30 days to “play with”, days that can be used for field trips, tests, working on papers or project, etc. And then, if your child completes the textbook in less than 180 days—they are done! That’s it. They finished that subject early! Yippeee!

Credit Hours and GPA's.
The High Schools assign “credits” to each subject—normally a subject is worth “1 credit hour” if it last the entire school year. If your child takes a subject for 1 semester only, then that course is assigned “1/2 a credit hour”. The standard used in computing a student’s G.P.A. (Grade Point Average) is usually a 4.0 for an A; 3.0 for a B; 2.0 for a C; 1.0 for a D; and 0 for an F. Advanced Placement courses, honor courses, and all college level courses are often given 1 additional point since the material is more difficult: in other words, for a dual enrolled student, they would receive a 5.0 for an A in that college level course; 4.0 for a B in the course; 3.0 for a C.

I have discussed credits in a previous post so I won’t go into too much detail about that. YOU as the parent/teacher determine what the credit is for the class, not the public school system (at least in Texas). Even though my own son used one book for grammar, one for vocabulary and one for writing, I only gave him one credit for English. I could have given him a credit (or ½ credits) for each subject but to me they were all related to English. My son spent two years doing World History, but I only gave him credit for one year. Normally World History is covered in one year in public schools but then again, they don’t cover everything in the book whereas we did. To me it all depends on how in-depth the subject is as to how much “credit” I give.