Step 2 Content, con’t.

At this point, I had read through the entire published objectives for 7th graders in North Carolina. I had them sorted into charts with the notes from the unpacked PDFs, which gave me a general picture of what we should be teaching in order to stay on pace with public school. I had also looked over the objectives for the next few grades to see where we needed to be at the end.



But, it’s important to remember that objectives are not the end-all-be-all of selecting content. My son has some very specific needs that had to be addressed. He’s inability to write on demand was affecting his progress in every subject. At the other end, he was capable of much more in-depth science than he was getting.  And, even though he was in 7th grade, I was preparing him to take Algebra in 8th grade, which meant compressing 7th and 8th into one year.

After adding in all that and subtracting out what he had already done in 7th grade before we withdrew him, here’s the list I started with for the core subjects:

Math: Equations, ratios, probability, statistics, geometry (and added all skills normally taught in pre-algebra)

Social Studies: Eras from the renaissance to modern times, influence of geography on history

Science: Organisms, body systems, genetics, physics (and added evolution)

English:  analytical reading and writing on literature, realistic fiction, non-fiction, poetry, informational narrative, and memoirs (added writing prompts in all subjects, writing just for fun and research methods)

We were about two weeks out from starting school, so I needed to find the resources (books, workbooks, videos, etc.) that would fit. I’ll go into detail about that fun quest in separate posts for each subject.