How to know if your teen is ready for high school, with tips to prepare them to be ready.
Do you have middle schoolers at home, who are thinking about the
college option?
The other day I spoke with a homeschooling family, whose middle schooler was
interested in going to college, when the time came.
She was thinking about college for her daughter, and she wondered if there were
things that she could do now, to help prepare her young teen with that future
goal.
During our discussion, I came up with seven factors to look at, for your middle
schooler, with the college option in mind.
Let's
start with English skills:
1.
Whatever English curriculum you are using, take time to discuss what
you read, using some literary analysis.
Does your curriculum, whether published or homemade, include critical thinking
questions to discuss? Is your child beginning to analyze what they are
reading?
There are, of course, many options for middle school English. In our
home, we used Oak Meadow, and also 7 Sisters Literature and English courses and
lit guides.
Oak
Meadow English 8 is all about introducing the components of good literature to
your middle schooler.
We
love Oak Meadow's focus on hands on learning, and how it works to meet the
child when he is: head, hands and heart.
"Through this course, literature
became something that my daughter looked forward to each day....She enjoyed
learning about plot, setting, point of view, and characterization. But she when
she got to symbolism, and foreshadowing, she was..." click here to continue with my review
For many more ideas for middle school
english, go to The Curriculum Choice, and search for
middle school English.
2. Write a lot!
Encourage all kinds of writing, fiction, essays, reports, biographies,
autobiographies, etc.
We all know how important writing skills
are to the college student. How is your child doing with their writing?
Do they have a chance to practice different types of writing? Are they
finding a way to express themselves in the written form? Use their
interests to craft writing assignments which will be meaningful to them.
One year, my daughter was really
interested in airplanes and the airline industry, so that became the focus of
her research report that year. Another year, she was wanting to try her
hand in story writing...so we focused on that, but still asked for some essay
writing, to continue to build on those skills, too.
One of my favorite simple resources for
writing, is the Spectrum Writing series. I liked it was simple to use,
and was full of writing prompts throughout the book. include different types of
essays to write. There are easy to follow instructions for each
assignment, and they include a wide variety of writing skills to
practice.
The Curriculum Choice has many helpful
reviews of writing curriculum, including IEW, etc.
3. Consider using a composition
evaluation service.
How do you know how your child is doing
with their writing skills? One resource that we found for that was
from Write Shop, who will evaluate essays that you can send in
to them.
4. Encourage free reading.
Kids who read a lot, develop strong
vocabularies. We know that. That will help a lot with college
entrance testing, SAT, ACT, and college itself. My daughter loved reading
science fiction and adventure stories, and we encouraged that. It doesn't
have to be limited to good literature.
5. Math - Get Pre-algebra done.
Most colleges ask for algebra 1 in 9th
grade. So a good understanding of pre-algebra during middle school can
really help. We used Teaching Textbooks, then went to
Switched-On-Schoolhouse's, which helped my daughter with retention. There are many
great resources for pre-algebra.
6. Consider providing practice in
test taking.
We used hands-on approaches in our
homeschool, with lots of unit studies. But somewhere in 7th grade, we
began to incorporate some quizzes and tests.
Test taking skills are key to success in college. And starting in middle
school gives your child plenty of time to practice. I hated to add this
in, but starting in middle school gave my daughter plenty of time to get used
to tests, and not be anxious about them. Knowing how to take tests has
helped her so much in college.
7. Encourage their budding
interests.
It's never too early to encourage our
young teen's special interests. And isn't this one of the reasons that we
homeschool, anyway?
My daughter's interests in irish dancing and student government activities,
with Youth and Government, helped her get into college. There are many
ways to show your child's leadership skills, volunteering at church, assisting
in a class in co-op are just a few.
Colleges want to know what your child is really about. They see lots of
applications from students who are just doing activities to build up their
applications. But they want to see students who have interests that are
real, and our homeschoolers can excel in that.
These are my favorite tips for preparing
your middle schooler for college, while keeping the flavor of your homeschool
strong.
What would you add to the list? Homeschooling is a great way to educate our
kids, and to prepare them for future endeavors in their life, including the
college option.
Below is a picture of my daughter's first day on campus, after graduating from our homeschool.
