Top-10 Tips for Homeschool Planning for High School

Over the next week, I'll be writing a series of posts on planning the school year. Once the series is complete, I'll pull the posts together into one cohesive document to share on the website. I will also include actual planning forms to give you solid, practical help.

To start, here are some basics for making a multi-year plan along with the first of the planning forms:

Top-10 List:
Planning the high school years with Homeschool Connections.

1. Determine what courses are needed to meet basic graduation requirements. Here is help to get you started: Basic Scope and Sequence for College-Bound Catholic Students. You could also use your state's requirements as a base to start.
2. Review your child's coursework to date. On your scope and sequence, cross off courses completed so far.
3. Make a list of courses still needed for graduation. Determine how you will spread them out over the remaining high school years.
4. Ask your child about future goals. A student who wants to be a programmer will take different courses than a student who wants to be a chemist. 
5. Determine your student's strengths and weaknesses. For example a student who struggles with language, but learns well using a multi-sensory methods (dyslexic children often fall into this category), may do better with American Sign Language than with Spanish. 
6. Take into consideration your student's loves. An example here is a student who loves to write stories. That student should take more of our fiction-writing courses. They will still learn important writing skills in addition to learning litererary analysis. The bonus is that they will enjoy learning it more in a creative-writing atmosphere. 
7. Once you have taken the above steps, you will have a strong idea of where you want to go in the future. Now open and save the HSC course catalogs and review all the options available to you. 
8. Look for other resources to help you and your child meet goals. Books; websites; local co-ops; other online course providers; etc.
9. Seek out advice from other homeschooling parents. If you're having trouble with a needed course or can't decide on the best path to take, go to your local or online support group. We're also here to help you at homeschoolconnections@gmail.com
10. Free planning forms can be found at: Homeschool Planning Forms

Use this form to complete these steps successfully: Planning High School with HSC (Word document will download automatically).