Simple, Flexible Planning (for Homeschooling Four Students at Once)

I'm beginning my 11th year homeschooling in about two weeks. Last year, I experimented with planning for high school credits before it *really* mattered, and I'm glad I did.  I came up with some best practices for myself for simple and flexible planning to help me facilitate and stay on top of assignments, assessment and schedules for doing four students at once! I wanted to share my planning steps over the summer that allow flexibility and simplicity and make the school year as restful for me as possible. I typically use this process only for my upper grade kids for whom I'm going to be assigning grades and credits. My elementary kids do not need such thorough planning. We just work faithfully and build skills without worrying about grades. 

So here's my planning process for flexibility! 

Step One: Source any pre-made lesson plans and weekly rhythms available. 

Several of the curricula I have chosen for the year either come with pre-made weekly lesson plans from the company, or other moms have put together plans and sell them or give them away as a free download. I find all of these that I can for all of our programs.  This year, I was able to find pre-made lesson plans for math, logic, literature and astronomy. Additionally, Latin and writing came with a suggested weekly rhythm to the ways the chapters are structured, and this helps a lot with the next step. So I download and print all of these and put them in my planner. This basically leaves our humanities. Here are some examples of free lesson lists I downloaded that came with our programs: 

Discovery of Deduction plan: free download from CAP

Brit Lit Lesson Plan: Free download from Logos Press

Lesson List for Complete Algebra: free download from VideoText

Step Two:  Create a list of lessons for certain subjects. 

This may sound daunting, but it doesn't take me very much time at all.  I don't do this for every subject, because they don't all need it.  I don't make detailed lesson lists for Latin and writing, because they have "weekly rhythms" that make it easy to assign a chapter each weekend.  

This year, I made detailed lists of lessons for: 

-history

-philosophy

-government

-astronomy (because I'm adding in readings to the pre-made plan I found)

With these lesson lists in hand, and the pre-made plans sourced, I have everything I need to weekly just do the next thing in the list in each subject without opening up all the books every weekend.  This is HUGE for me.  It also means if we get sick, have something come up and miss an afternoon or morning of school and get off in a subject or two, but not in everything, it's very easy to adjust and keep doing the next thing on every list. Here's some screen shots of lists I made: 

List of Field Activities for Signs & Seasons

List of reading assignments in Signs & Seasons by chapter

List of included topics and activities in Oxford history program we're using

Step Three: Identify Assignments and Assessments that will be graded. 

Because I'm giving high school credits this year, there will be grades given on certain assignments, and there will be exams.  I identify which assignments I'm going to grade, and when tests will fall in the lesson lists.  This is simple to do with the lesson lists already made, and most of the exams provided by the curriculum. 

Step Four: Enter Graded Assignments and Exams into OLLY

I'm using OLLY to keep track of our high school. It allows me to create our own courses, credits, and grading rubrics. Based on the information I enter into OLLY, it will produce quarterly or semester grades, GPA's, and formal transcripts of each year of high school.  I found last year that the best way to use OLLY was to ONLY enter the assignments that would receive grades.  Within OLLY, each course has then a list of graded assignments that you can drop onto a calendar.  When the assignment is complete, you simply enter the score in OLLY.  The app does all the rest. :) 

I also created my own grading rubric in OLLY.  Because I'm not thrilled with giving percentage scores to their work because it's basically meaningless, I created a simple, more meaningful way to assess their work.  I score them on three categories: 

A or I: Accepted or Incomplete. If Accepted, they did what was asked. If Incomplete, I give them feedback in writing or in conversation, and they keep working on it. 

P or L: Punctual or Late. If Punctual, it was done on time. If Late, obviously, it wasn't. 

E or M: Excellent or Mediocre. If excellent, I can tell they worked to the best of their ability. If Mediocre, I can tell they put forth minimal effort and did not give their best. 

A, P and E are all worth two points each. I, L, and M are worth one point each.  So the highest "score" is a 6.  I should never assign a 3 to an assignment, because if they receive an I, they will keep working until it is an A, accepted. So the lowest possible score will be a 4.  I've ranked these roughly like 6=A, 5=B, 4=C. Really, they'll get a C because they didn't do their best the first time or turn something in by the deadline. In order to give certain assignments more weight than others in the overall grade, I have simply multiplied the point totals by a factor of 3. Here are some screenshots of our OLLY: 

 

Step 5: Plan Your Week

Each weekend or Friday, I take the lesson lists and drop the next assignments into my weekly planner so I know exactly what to do each day.  At the end of the week, I check off in the lesson lists what we actually accomplished so I know where to pick up with planning the next week. How simple is that? Here's what my weekly lesson sheet looks like: 

That's it!  The lesson lists allow me to easily bump one subject and not all. They allow me to easily see the next things that are coming this week, next week. They allow me to easily see if we're falling behind.  The OLLY assignments keep grading simple by only having me enter grades for the things that I want, rather than all their weekly assignments.  Keeping my grading to a minimum is key to staying on top of things. I love putting in the time to get this all set up over the summer so that my weekends are more free through the school year. Assessment and accountability is CRITICAL to high school success, so I'm hoping that the things I learned from last year to create this plan will set up us to succeed this year!