Learning to read may appear natural and, therefore, easy to teach. Yet it's one of the most difficult tasks any child will take on; and homeschooling parents must cover some important foundational topics along the way. The National Reading Panel has identified these skills as phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
A great deal of research* suggests students who have mastered two main critical skills-good phonological awareness and letter naming-will have little difficulty learning to read.
Cottey College: The Perfect Fit for Homeschooled Girls
By Jane Rivers
College selection is a challenging decision for all students, but especially for homeschooling families. After years of developing a safe, creative environment for student learning, students are expected to enter a new world – both socially and academically. For the first time, homeschoolers are challenged to learn and engage in school, while being bombarded by unfamiliar distractions and social pressures. This can be especially true for young women who are not accustomed to the constant attention from young men. Some parents choose to sacrifice academic excellence in order to maintain a safe and secure home life for young college-age women. However, there is one school that offers academic excellence in a safe and nurturing environment. Cottey College is a home away from home – a perfect fit for homeschooling students.
Assessment by Valerie Schuetta, M.A. Reading Specialist
As a Reading Specialist, I am always looking for fun, engaging activities that will enhance my students' success in reading. The students I work with are considered high-risk for reading failure, so it is important to me that they are highly motivated and engaged in the lesson. The lessons I present consist of letter and sound activities, sight words, a phonemic awareness lesson, and reading for fluency. I especially like teaching phonemic awareness because it is the one component of reading that I feel you can have the most fun with and the activities can be very engaging, especially to younger students.
Q: Should we throw out grammar, spelling, and rules during the creative process?
A: Yes.
I was fifteen the first time I drove a car. Mr. McAfree, my Driver's Ed teacher, slid into the vinyl-clad passenger seat as Craig Sulley, another student, buckled up in the back. Even though McAfree was nearing retirement, he looked uncomfortable. I chalked it up to lack of self-confidence and revved the engine before pulling out into traffic.
By Michael Leppert
This is one of the most elementary questions that parents ask when contemplating whether to homeschool or not. Most of us assume that school teaching requires skills that we mere parents do not possess because we have not been trained. But the seasoned homeschool parent realizes that these skillshave more to do with crowd-control and the imparting and monitoring of knowledge to 30 or 45 children that are not one's own. In most homeschooling households, the student-teacher ratio is 2:1 or 3:1 at most. Any teacher would love to work in such an environment! Plus, discipline should not be as much a problem for a parent as it is for a teacher.
Yes, My Grown Homeschooled Children Are Odd ? And Yours Will Be Too!
By Diane Flynn Keith
I am sick and tired of defending homeschooling from the question, “What about socialization?” Members of the modern homeschool movement have insisted for thirty years that homeschooled children are well-socialized. We laughingly refer to socialization as the “S word.” We deflect the socialization question by insisting it’s a myth. And yet, it persists.
by Nan Barchowsky
You and I heard the news: Cursive is out. My curiosity was aroused. Would no handwriting be taught in US schools? I doubt you would buy that for your children! Handwriting is just too important.
Three basic methods of handwriting are taught today -- or was that yesterday? There?s print-script (manu?script or ball-and-stick), cursive italic, and conventional cursive where all letters are joined within words.
by Jean Burk
Full Scholarship ? two words that could change your life. Getting free college can be like winning the lottery. Imagine throwing away several trash bags full of college scholarships that come in the mail. This is what happened to us. But for some families, getting just one scholarship offer could be the difference between junior college and the perfect university.
By Michael and Mary Leppert[A partial excerpt from The Homeschooling Almanac 2000-2001.]
In the late 1960s, Boston educator John Holtcame up with some ideas about learning that startled many of his colleagues and formed the basis of the unschooling movement in homeschooling. After formulating his basic theories that children are naturally curious and will lead themselves in exploring and finding out about the world around them, Holt worked to bring about school reform, attempting to implement his ideas in the classroom setting to which he was accustomed.
