Many homeschoolers at this time of year are finding that the entire homeschool curriculum for the year has been covered, and it is time to end the school year. However, at what point do you officially call it done until you put away the teaching materials until next fall?
Some homeschoolers, go over their checklists, some write reports, some test, some just proclaim it done. Personally, I like to review.
For us, the review process takes about a month, and I am currently 3 weeks into it. The materials you use for review can be from any number of sources, but personally, I like workbooks. While I am not crazy about workbooks for busy works, or as teaching materials, I find that they are an excellent way to determine if your child has retained what they have learned and/ or missed anything they should have learned the previous year.
My favorite workbook for year-end review is the Summer Bridge Series. (Recently the makers of Summer Bridge have published a line for Christians as well.) It goes up to grade 7/8. Summer bridge workbooks are designed to be completed two pages a day for the duration of the summer. Since we complete the workbook in a month’s time, I have them complete 3-4 pages a day. Once the pages are complete, the child and I then check the completed work for errors and discuss any mistakes or questions the child has.
When the workbook is complete, we are then ready for standardized testing. On the required years (in my state), I order the test, administer the test, and send it in for correcting, at which point we call it complete. On years like this where neither child is required to take a standardized test, I pull a grade level test off line (usually a placement test) off the internet. Once the test is completed, I write a quick evaluation that tells what development goals the children have met during the year and their “final exam” scores based on whatever test was administered. During the rest of the year, I don’t worry about test scores with the exception that I teach toward mastery, so a child has to score 90% in a lesson quiz to move on to the next lesson. How long it takes them to get to that point does not matter. What really matters to me is how much information they retained at the end of the year.
When I am satisfied that the child has demonstrated a fair retention level of what they have been taught during the school year, we proclaim that the school year is over. At this point, it would be fair to add that there were some years when it was not over. If test scores showed that a child needed more work in spelling, reading comprehension, and math, then we proclaim that we are slipping into what we call summer mode homeschooling instead.
(Stay tuned for my article on summer mode homeschooling.)
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