Feb 18 2008
Recording Keeping / Lesson Plans / Assignment Sheets
I first must confess that I am a techno-geek. I love all things technology related. In my purse, is a Motorola Q that works as a phone and PDA (personal digital assistant) and I read books, keep my phone / contact list, to do lists and more in one place. So, I am most familiar with electronic resources. But, I understand that not everyone is technology oriented, so I will try to include a number of printable resources for families that prefer to print a form and enter the information by hand.
First of all, I will describe the program I use in my homeschool – Homeschool Tracker.
I began using Homeschool Tracker about four years ago. The company offers fantastic support – answering emails in the evening and participating on an active forum. The forum is a fantastic resource too because users share their methods of using the product. Finally, the company also offers period user training sessions. All in all, I have never seen a product that is better supported.
While the free Homeschool Tracker Basic Edition is a great product, I did purchase the complete Homeschool Tracker Plus Edition about six months after I started using the Basic. Primarily, I was led to do this because I began to understand the value of the Lesson Plan feature offered in Plus. I use Mother of Divine Grace syllabi with some additions and substitutions of resources. This past year, since I have been using Plus for so long, I only needed to enter the Seventh Grade plans into the program and was able to re-use my Fifth, Third and First Grade Plans that I had entered in previous years. I saved a lot of time. And, as a side note, Tracker now offers a Lesson Plan Sharing Program, so you may not even have to enter lesson plans if someone else has input the information.
I also use the Weekly Planner section to input lessons that do not change from week to week. I use Math U See for our math program and while most of the time we progress one worksheet a day, there are times when we need to stay on a particular lesson longer thus I do not create a Lesson Plan for math, but simply use the Weekly Planner to require math each day. On the Weekly Planner, I also include the drill work each child is to do including Baltimore Catechism review, math facts, and more.
Finally, on Sunday evenings, I take about 20 minutes and submit the next week’s lesson plans to each child’s assignment sheet along with their Weekly Plans. When I input the Lesson Plans back in the summer, I included the week number in one of the columns, so I find it very easy to submit a week’s worth of assignments. And, if I find that I have slipped because of doctor appointments, or other outside activities, it is quite easy to reschedule that work for the following week.
Once all the work has been submitted to the Assignment section for each child, I print an assignment report for each child. For the little ones, it generally is a one page report and the older children have a two page report. The days of the week run across the top of the page, and then on the left side are the subjects and in each box are the details for that day’s assignments.
With this page in hand, my children are able to easily see what is required for the week. Some subjects lend themselves to the children working on them independently, and others require me to teach.
One final note, is that there are more features available. You can input grades for the assignments, keep track of library books, field trips, goals, memory work, and include a journal. And, with the grades that you have input, you can easily generate a report card and / or transcript.
Now, Homeschool Tracker of course is not the only piece of software available. I am including a list of other software and I hope you the reader will submit comments on what has worked for you:
Now, I know that many families just do not want to learn another piece of software, so there are a number of downloadable sytems for record keeping / lesson planning that are paper based. You simply print the forms out and fill them out by hand:
- DonnaYoung.org – free – loads of forms
- The Full Year Notebook System
- Homeschool Planner Forms - free
- Avilian Method – free
