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We're staring down the end of the school year, and our focus may be on getting the final chapters and assignments completed, but there are a few other end of year tasks that need to be checked off the list too. Most of them involve organization. Keeping records, putting together a portfolio of completed work, deciding what to do with the books we've completed, and planning ahead for what we'll need to do next year.
Keeping records organized hasn't presented a great deal of difficulty for me most years, because I've been keeping most of my records using Homeschool Tracker Online. Well, let me walk that back a little bit . . . It's not too difficult provided I stayed on top of grading through most of the school year! That's a discipline that I've worked on and I'm much better at it, especially after learning the hard way a few times! I do my best to grade as we go, so I don't have a big backlog of test scores to plug into the Tracker at the end of the semester. So when I use the Tracker correctly, it saves me a lot of time and trouble! It can be used to produce all the year end records I might find helpful as well as to produce detailed assignment lists and lesson plans all through the year. Homeschool Tracker also keeps records of time spent, the resource lists, and all grades, so almost any record I want is right at my fingertips. (Read my full review of Homeschool Tracker Online here: Homeschool Tracker Online: A Homeschool Coffee Break Review.)
Many homeschoolers need to show a sample portfolio of work completed to an oversight near the end of the school year. In my group, most of the oversight reviewers visit each of families they are responsible for in their homes. That's what I do. However, I live quite a distance away from most everyone in the group and almost every year we've decided that it makes more sense for me to pack up a sample of my students' work and meet my reviewer somewhere. That means I need to find a way to pack up a cross-section of their work into a transportable package. That takes a bit of organization, as I decide whether I need to take the textbook or just the notebook full of completed assignments, for example.
We've finished with our textbooks for the year, so now what should we do with them? When my oldest two finished with a non-consumable textbook, chances were very (and I do mean VERY) good that I would keep the book. In case we could use it again next year. Well, sometimes that was smart - with books like Notgrass History, which we have used over and over. But I had an unfortunate habit of keeping almost everything, even though there wasn't much realistic chance that I would use it again. And honestly, there's seldom a real reason to keep all their notebooks full of lesson answers and completed quizzes. Or even the majority of writing assignments! I finally got a bit of a reality check a few years ago and did a major purge of the useless stuff I kept, and have learned to be fairly ruthless on a year by year basis. By all means, keep the essay or collection of poetry that is really special, or the best of their artwork. But it's really not necessary to keep every spelling test or math worksheet your child ever did. Pick the very best. Limit how much you keep. Pass along reusable curriculum and resources to other homeschool families.
What will we need next year? It shouldn't come as a surprise that we need to organize and evaluate when we've completed this year before I can really be sure of what we need to cover next year, and what curriculum and resources I will need to buy. This coming year, I will have to get textbooks for co-op, but I don't think we'll need anything else. We either have books already, or I'm planning to use something I can find on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It definitely feels strange to think about going to the annual homeschool curriculum fairs without my shopping list and wish list in hand, but I know I already own what we really need.
Keeping records organized hasn't presented a great deal of difficulty for me most years, because I've been keeping most of my records using Homeschool Tracker Online. Well, let me walk that back a little bit . . . It's not too difficult provided I stayed on top of grading through most of the school year! That's a discipline that I've worked on and I'm much better at it, especially after learning the hard way a few times! I do my best to grade as we go, so I don't have a big backlog of test scores to plug into the Tracker at the end of the semester. So when I use the Tracker correctly, it saves me a lot of time and trouble! It can be used to produce all the year end records I might find helpful as well as to produce detailed assignment lists and lesson plans all through the year. Homeschool Tracker also keeps records of time spent, the resource lists, and all grades, so almost any record I want is right at my fingertips. (Read my full review of Homeschool Tracker Online here: Homeschool Tracker Online: A Homeschool Coffee Break Review.)
Also see my related posts:
Many homeschoolers need to show a sample portfolio of work completed to an oversight near the end of the school year. In my group, most of the oversight reviewers visit each of families they are responsible for in their homes. That's what I do. However, I live quite a distance away from most everyone in the group and almost every year we've decided that it makes more sense for me to pack up a sample of my students' work and meet my reviewer somewhere. That means I need to find a way to pack up a cross-section of their work into a transportable package. That takes a bit of organization, as I decide whether I need to take the textbook or just the notebook full of completed assignments, for example.
We've finished with our textbooks for the year, so now what should we do with them? When my oldest two finished with a non-consumable textbook, chances were very (and I do mean VERY) good that I would keep the book. In case we could use it again next year. Well, sometimes that was smart - with books like Notgrass History, which we have used over and over. But I had an unfortunate habit of keeping almost everything, even though there wasn't much realistic chance that I would use it again. And honestly, there's seldom a real reason to keep all their notebooks full of lesson answers and completed quizzes. Or even the majority of writing assignments! I finally got a bit of a reality check a few years ago and did a major purge of the useless stuff I kept, and have learned to be fairly ruthless on a year by year basis. By all means, keep the essay or collection of poetry that is really special, or the best of their artwork. But it's really not necessary to keep every spelling test or math worksheet your child ever did. Pick the very best. Limit how much you keep. Pass along reusable curriculum and resources to other homeschool families.
What will we need next year? It shouldn't come as a surprise that we need to organize and evaluate when we've completed this year before I can really be sure of what we need to cover next year, and what curriculum and resources I will need to buy. This coming year, I will have to get textbooks for co-op, but I don't think we'll need anything else. We either have books already, or I'm planning to use something I can find on SchoolhouseTeachers.com. It definitely feels strange to think about going to the annual homeschool curriculum fairs without my shopping list and wish list in hand, but I know I already own what we really need.
How are you getting your homeschool organized at year end? Leave a comment and let me know!
Also see my related posts:
Naturally Organized - Not!
Visit the Homeschool Review Crew blog for the Organising Homeschool Round-up, and find more thoughts on this topic from Crew members. This will be live on Friday, April 20th.
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