American SAT Homeschool Helps Homeschooling

Homeschooling Highschool – Developing a Plan and Setting a Course

Homeschooling highschool children in the UK was a choice not many make and taking the American SAT path while maintaining our Charlotte Mason ethos rather than the UK’s A-Level program most certainly put us on a road that very few UK home educators had travelled.

However, we stuck with what suited our children most and what be believed in and both our girls got into university and have since graduated.

As we come to the end of another school year I have noticed that more and more UK home educators are looking for an alternative to the traditional A-Levels and so I thought that a mini-series on developing a plan and setting a course might be in order.

I’m Homeschooling Through Highschool! Where Do I Start?

As you know, a homeschooling mom is always thinking ahead to the next thing. As our thoughts turn to the next school year (and beyond) there are many different things that one has to consider when mapping out a plan.

We homeschooled for 13 years and if there is one thing I have learned it is that things never stay the same. A homeschool is fluid, always changing, always adjusting to learning needs suitable for each child at whatever age and stage they are at.  

I have to say that homeschooling was far simpler when my girls were younger. There were no formal considerations to meet, we spent lots of time exploring subjects by using unit studies and hand’s on activities. Of course Maths and English were more formal, but the going was easy.

I found the latter high school years to be rather stressful to be honest, but looking back I can see it’s because I didn’t have a firm grasp on ‘the big picture’. Most of what we did was driven by my gut instincts, steering in a vague direction of where we thought we should be going and praying lots. At least that’s how it’s felt to me – my husband would probably tell you otherwise because he has always had an immense amount of trust and confidence in my abilities as a homeschooling mum. I was all doubts and questions.

I suppose something must have worked because we achieved DD1’s goal of going to college to study Art and Design and subsequently university to study Graphic Design and Illustration; and DD2’s goal of studying Fashion Marketing and Communication at university.

But in retrospect – and that’s always the thing isn’t it – I would have done things a bit differently and thus not felt like a blundering idiot for most of the time.

The trick to successfully navigating these high school years is to look at it from back to front – what I mean is, look at the end goal and work backwards to present day to make it a workable plan. So here we go – lets get a handle on the end goal…

‘The Big Picture’ and how to go about achieving it.

As you approach the high school years I would say that this has to be one of the most important things to get a handle on. You need to have a firm grasp on the direction you want to be moving in.

So, for example, with DD1 she really had no idea on what it was she wanted to study after school except that it needed to be a creative course of study. She also knew that she certainly did NOT want to go to university but of course this could (and did) change. Now, we have some certainty’s here and some variables, but, I also wanted to keep options open so that if she changed her mind on certain points we could do so.

1.In assessing the ‘big picture’ you need to establish your child’s hopes for study and future career and balance it with the practical side of keeping your child’s future options as wide as possible.

Okay – so we knew that as university was not on DD1’s radar at this point, college would be the next natural option. Here are some of the questions we asked ourselves.

  • What colleges are in our town and what creative courses do they offer?
  • What are the entry requirements for the courses we are interested in?
  • What qualification will our daughter achieve?
  • Will the qualification she receives allow her to go to Uni if she changes her mind?

For all of the courses the minimum requirements was an English and Maths GCSE with other courses requiring 4 or 5. If they didn’t have the Maths and English they would be put onto those courses alongside their chosen course of study. However… this would put more pressure on your student during her/his course of study. You want your child to be able to focus 100% on their course and thus do as well as possible. So we knew that these two things were important to get done.

But we didn’t neglect the rest of her education, we continued to create a Record of Prior Learning (transcript) of all our courses of study in our homeschool. This transcript together with her GCSE results and evidence of her research and writing abilities is what secured her an unconditional place on her chosen course.

When looking at the courses on offer, the end qualification was of importance to us. As she was not taking A-Level subjects (which is what is needed to gain university entrance) we wanted to ensure that the qualification she receives from her course of study gave her and equivalent qualification to A-levels so that should she wish to go to university later on in her life she would be able to do so.

So do you see the picture here?

It’s important to keep options open, we all know that as we grow older and wiser, we often have desires to do something (like further study) later on that perhaps we didn’t feel strongly about in our younger years.

Balance your children’s desires with good old common sense.

2.The Long-Term Plan

Once you have had a conversation with your teen about their hopes and dreams for the future and you know what direction they are hoping to go in, I would highly recommend taking an afternoon to draw out a rough long-term plan. The time period over which this plan would stretch would be determined by you and your children’s needs.

So for example, our youngest daughter wished to attend university. So I knew that we needed to take a route that will give her the qualifications she needs to get into uni, i.e – we either need to tackle GCSE’s and A-levels or gain the equivalent qualification that is accepted by UK universities. As it so happens, after speaking to her 1st choice university and finding out the facts, we have decided to continue on our ‘American’ route and sit the American SAT exam, along with presenting her GPA and transcript as required by the uni.

Now it’s time to break that up. I do that again by asking myself questions.

  • What do we need to do to prepare for the SAT’s?
  • Which resources would best prepare her for the SAT?
  • When do we aim to sit the SAT exam by, thus giving us a timeline to work to?
  • What additional activities can we plan to participate in or do that will help the universities to look favorably upon her application? For instance, she is signed up to and participated in the 3 week long NCS program this summer. You may want to consider the Duke of Edinburgh Award.

These questions will help determine the timeline with your child and what it is that needs to happen on an annual, monthly and weekly basis in order to achieve  her goal of entering university in September 20??.

Hopefully these 2 steps will give you a broad overview of the direction you will be traveling in and gives you a plan to work from over the next X years, in our case it was over a 2 year period.

3. From this plan I will now focus on ‘Year 1’ and I will:

  • Discuss subject necessities and choices with your teen.
  • Look at and choose the best curriculum that covers the SAT requirements, supports your teens choices and that suites their learning style. We were always a Charlotte Mason inspired homeschool so our resources were gathered eclectically.
  • Plan out a weekly schedule of all subjects for the year that ensures you cover all the work plus, allow for plenty of revision.
  • Draw up a timetable because it is good to know what you are going to be working on when.
  • Book the SAT well in advance at your chosen test center. You might need to book accommodation too as the SAT centers are fewer and further between here in England – but we certainly would not say no to a trip to London if need be!
  • Schedule in homeschool enrichment subjects that will support our long-term goals.
  • Make sure your schedule allows for a few favorites that are not ‘test’ subjects i.e composer study, art appreciation, nature study and field trips. 
  • Draw up a book-list of titles for the college/uni-bound student that you want your teen to read during the year.

In my next post of this little mini-series I will look at choosing the curriculum that I will need in order to achieve goal#1 and what the course of action will be to begin preparing your teen for university – also why you need to be intentional in starting this prep sooner rather than later. 

I hope that this post has been insightful or helpful to you. I always enjoy seeing how other homeschool mums plan for their home schools and will often find at least one idea that appeals to my planning side. I have also noticed that there are not many posts that address planning for the high school years and I personally wish that there were more on the subject.

If you have found this post helpful you may also want to read my post about choosing a high school curriculum. Don’t forget to subscribe below for more homeschooling and Christian faith content,

(2) Comments

  1. Sue Pamp says:

    It is so nice to catch up with what is going on with you and family. Your girls are a bit like mine in that they are like chalk and cheese, total opposites to each other – different goals and dreams. 🙂

  2. Penny says:

    Oh golly. You are singing my song. Paragraph three sums up my last 4 years – all doubts and questions, with a large helping of panic in there too! It all worked out in the end – but very stressful.

    I'm looking forward to a fresh start with my youngest daughter as well, and have many of the same goals you do (SAT/ACT, etc.). I will say that for my eldest, finding a practice test experience was the most helpful thing I did for her. It was free at our local library and administered a practice ACT as it would be taken "for real". It helped her a lot. I may not be able to do that with my youngest if it's not an option, but I will certainly administer one myself (timer and all!) if needed. Now that the SAT has changed I'm a little baffled by it, so I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts. All of my old info is outdated now, so I'm hoping to hear from others who have taken the test recently what the real differences are. The Well Trained Mind forum is a good resource for those types of questions, I find.

    FWIW, we used Princeton Review books with my eldest, they were excellent. Definitely buying those again, as well as doing the "question of the day" and taking the practice tests on the ACT/SAT websites. Also, Khan Academy has terrific practice info – as least they did 2 years ago – I need to check back with them soon! Doing practice test after practice test (at home with the books) was what really helped in terms of getting the idea about the questions and improving taking them timed.

    Thanks for posting this and helping me reset my planning button! Good luck with yours!

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