As I have stated in other blogs, my homeschooling style is more traditional for reading and math. That means that my day has many of the same activities that students would do in public and private schools. My curriculum will also resemble what a traditional school uses. In this blog I will talk about what I think makes a good curriculum.

Before I start, I know that not everyone homeschools in a traditional way. You might be ready to leave this page because “it doesn’t apply to me”. BUT WAIT, before you go, hear me out! Not one style of teaching has it all correct. There are many things that we can learn from each other. So, if you are an unschooler or a Charlotte Masoner, I would love for you to stay. On average I only have 700 words to write in a blog, so you can’t be wasting too much time if you decide this is a bunch of bologna. 🙂

As homeschoolers, most of us can agree that the school system has some things to learn. I mean why would we be homeschooling if we didn’t. I will say that although there are some things that they need to change, there are some things that they are doing well.

As a former teacher, there are some things that I think that need to be explicitly taught which are reading and math. These are the two that I will focus on for today.

ATTRIBUTES THAT ALL CURRICULUMS SHOULD HAVE

-Logical Sequence: Does the curriculum material build on itself in a clear way. I make sure that there is a logical way that that lessons are organized. Simply put, do the lessons skip around. Does the lesson order make sense. Some lessons are what we call spiral method. This means that there is one standard that is taught one day and a new standard taught the next day. The goal behind these curriculums are that if you teach a little portion of a standard throughout the year there will be mastery by the end of the year. I believe this way is confusing and doesn’t allow students enough time to grasp a concept before moving on. I want a curriculum that sticks with one standard for about a week at a time. I believe this is crucial for mastery.

Appropriate: Does that curriculum provided an appropriate level of challenge. I want a curriculum that pushes students but not so much that it causes constant frustration.

Rigor: I want students to think deeply. I look for a curriculum that has students using their critical thinking skills instead of memorization and recall.

READING

Reading is crucial in the younger years. In the early grades, students should be “learning to read”. There will be many people who will debate on when to start reading instruction and when they should have “mastered” reading. Some may even say, they will learn to read when they are interested. While there are some cases that some students should wait, most students are capable of learning to read as early as three. Kids can absolutely start learning letter names/sounds this early. We want kids to be learning to read in these early years so kids can eventually transition to “reading to learn”. Learning does not stop once they can read. This is when student led learning can begin, which I think we can all agree is the goal. Students can’t learn on their own until they learn to read. Reading has to be systematically and explicitly taught before we can turn the reins over to the student. So what do I look for in a English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum?

*IT MUST BE BACKED BY THE SCIENCE OF READING*
No ifs, ands, or buts! I will go in to what exactly the science of reading is in another blog, but for now, here are some quick things I look for.

1. Phonics Instruction: a method of teaching people to read by correlating sounds with letters or groups of letters in an alphabetic writing system. If you are are anything like me, this definition did not help when I first heard it. Basically, each letter or certain groups of letters will make certain sounds. Students should be able to look at these letters and tell you the sounds (phonemes) that they make. One thing I look for when researching curriculum is ,does this curriculum have explicit instruction when teaching these sounds. I need my curriculum to tell me exactly how to teach these letters and sounds to students. Many curriculums will give you a script to help you know exactly what to say. This is extremely helpful if you are new to homeschooling and teaching kids to read. I also want plenty of practice before we move on to the next group of letters. The second thing I am looking for in a curriculum is there must be a systematic way of teaching these sounds. You will find this at the beginning of each curriculum. This is called the scope and sequence. Letters should be taught in a way that sets students up to read in a quick manner. If I see a curriculum that teaches one letter per week, especially if these letters are in alphabetical order, it is an automatic no for me dawg! I want my child reading as soon as possible. There will be many different arguments on which letters to introduce first, but what most curriculums agree on is that at least 1-2 vowels need to be introduced rather quickly along with a few consonants. One theory is to start with the letters S, A, T, P, I, and N. When you start with these letters, there are many different words you can spell. Pat, sat, tap, sit, nip, and nap are a few examples. You do not want to wait until students learn all 26 letters before you work on blending those sounds together to read words.

2. Phonemic Awareness: This is the ability to recognize and manipulate individual sounds (phonemes) in words. Yet another hard definition to understand. A simple way to say it is, students should be able to hear (isolating sounds) but also remove or add sounds in a word. This is all done by listening and speaking. There is no writing involved in phonemic awareness. There are many parts to phonemic awareness. Some examples are rhyming, isolating beginning, middle and end sounds, syllables, etc. Here are some examples in action. Say to your student, “I will give you four sounds, you tell me what the word is: /s/ /t/ /o/ /p/. What is the word?” You can reverse that, “The word is chip. Tell me the three sounds you hear in chip”. Another example, “say click. change the /ck/ to /p/. What is the word?”

3. Decodable Books: I need my curriculum to have decodable books. These are books that have words/sentences that students can read easily because they have already been taught the sounds explicitly. If we are using the example above, SATPIN, we would not have a decodable book that has “Cam can dig up sticks”. There are many sounds in this sentence that students have not learned. You will even see that many of the “beginner books” will have sounds that children wont learn how to read until first or second grade. Your child reading these decodable books should be the meat of your lesson. Students need many opportunities to read using the skills they have learned.

There are some other things that I look for in a reading curriculum but these are the main components that I think are important.

MATH

The main thing I look for in math is rigor. Are students using their critical thinking skills? I am going to say something that may ruffle some feathers. Before you throw your phone and cuss me out, I would love a chance to explain myself. When I look for a curriculum in math, I want it to be based on Common Core Standards (cue the pitchforks). I’m not sure if common core has caused as much of an uproar in your state as it has in Tennessee. When people hear the words Common Core, it causes as much strife as it would if I just told a “ya mama joke”. Seriously, people lose their minds. “The government just wants to control us”, which is true but I do not think that was the goal behind Common Core. “They should just stick with the old way of math, this stuff is too hard. I don’t even understand, how can my child?”

A definition from doodlelearning.com states “While traditional math (the old way) teaching strategies focus on formula memorization and topic specific learning patterns, Common Core works to give your students a deeper level of knowledge by introducing broader, more foundational methods of thinking as well as strategies that align with a more in depth learning”. When I give you this definition, does it help to understand the why behind my choice. You may be thinking, “cool, that sounds great, but what does that look like?”

To me, common core is demanding students to use deeper thinking skills. Common core uses real life situations to learn. For example, in the old days, you had to memorize what 8+6 was. There wasn’t much of an explanation to it. It was just something you had to know because it would be on your timed test you took every week. I am not saying memorization is bad but when it is used in isolation, that is where it can become difficult for some kids. Common Core introduces the why behind addition. It also give you different strategies to add. For example, students may use many different manipulatives to solve the problem. They may use their fingers, pictures, unfix cubes, counters, number lines, part-part whole maps, or tens frames to solve the problems. This gives students many additional ways if one way doesn’t make sense. My daughter loves a number line. In my opinion, I think this is one of the hardest ways. I think it is the one that is the easiest to get confused and mess up on, but she doesn’t and that is all that matters!

This was a lot! I told you at the beginning of the blog, I average 700 words. This one is a little less than 1,800. If you stuck around to hear what I had to say, I hope you at least found a few things you can take from this. If you are an unschooler that stuck it out, you deserve a medal! But seriously, thanks!

If you have any advice on curriculum please leave it below! We all have different things we look for in curriculum, so it is nice to hear other peoples perspectives.