So.... I am officially stressing! DD has a 65% average in Social Studies. I have absolutely NO time to help her. I'm trying to figure out if I should slow her down, give her some supplimental help, and reset the tests and quizzez to allow her to try again and improve her scores. I don't want to coddle her, or encourage poor efforts by allowing her to retake the tests. She is doing great at the daily work because as she answers the questions, she can review the text as she goes, but for the quizzes and tests, the text is hidden and she is supposed to 'know' the material, but she doesn't! Also the tests/quizzes don't co-incide with the daily questions, so she doesn't know what to study. Coming from PS, she is used to being told 'what to study' to SOS which doesn't give any clues as to what is on the test. Anyway... any ideas? encouragement?
My Ds had issues with SOS, too. I ended up setting it to allow open book quizzes, I think, unless I had to open my teacher version so he could see the text? I can't remember now. We ended up using workbooks this year since he had so much trouble with SOS. He also has Tourette's Syndrome and was having difficulty looking at the screen for so long. We also switched this year because SOS would count so many things wrong that weren't or the questions were worded in such a terrible way that even I was confused by what they wanted. We often had to go back over tests question by question and adjust the answers together. I hope other SOS uses have some good ideas for you. I didn't use it long enough to learn all the ins and outs of the program and how it can be tweaked.
I tried SOS, but ditched it quickly. As Brooke said, it sometimes counts things wrong that really aren't. You may want to check back over your daughter's work.
Yes, I should add that after only a couple months, we figured out that ds should only do his SOS course when I was in the room. Otherwise he was marking so many he needed help with that we were spending twice the time on it than necessary.
We've run into some similar issues. I have started to help DD study for her quizzes and tests. That helps a lot. And sometimes if she is really stuck on a quiz question I will help her by rewording it or reminding her of a topic we studied. Not giving her the answer, but giving a few prompts. I always go over their work and check the answers marked wrong. Sometimes a spelling error is marked completely wrong, so I give them the point. Generally SOS is better than almost everything else we've tried for language arts, so I'm still happy with it. It's not hands off, but it definitely makes my kids more independent than they were last year.
We are using SOS history for ds 10th grade and not having any issues. This is our first year using it, so maybe later we will run into problems but so far everything has been fine. I haven't had to change anything yet. I'm not even sure I would know how to, lol. I would just reset the test and quizzes for them to take over again. My ds knows that I will make him retake it if he doesn't do well. I have done that on 2 quizzes, not because it was a bad grade but I wanted him to understand what he got wrong. Editing to say we have not had any issues with the program. I re-read my post & I think that may have came out wrong. I didn't mean to sound sassy, sorry if I did. As Katie stated below, just have your child retake it. Whether they learn it from the test or the material they are still learning. Good luck!
The only advice I can think of, is to review the answers that she has gotten wrong, and discuss the correct answer. Than maybe have her take the test again. Hope this helps
Well the world measures our learning with tests, but we don't have to. I had a man tell me that all tests should be open book (when I was in high school) and I thought he was as nutty as... well I don't know. BUT, now... I look at it like this: 1. We ask kids to answer questions as they read material. 2. We ask them to memorize parts of it. 3. We test over it. This may be random or planned (with a study sheet). 4. If they do good, we feel good. If not, then we feel bad. 5. Then we start over with another load (sometimes way too much) of information to memorize. But, is that a real indicator of learning that sticks with them? NO. I would say, ditch the tests or make up your own and let her do open book. OR, make up another assignment for a test grade. For example: Have her write a paragraph on the first colonist and what it would be like for someone from this century to have to go back and live that way. This will make her think about what she is reading and you will "see" what she is taking in. Of course, the assignment should be age appropriate. You can also assess how well she understands by having conversations with her. If anything, I would only use the tests as a tool to help her know what the world uses to evaluate learning and only when she is older.
okay , I adjusted my percentage so I am not the same as SOS starts out, but do you make the quiz an open book test? I do for quizes we have open book, then they can go back and look through what they did that quarter, dd used to take side notes on a word pad, I allowed her to check her personal notes a couple times during a test so she could like have a life line so to speak. This helped when things were really hard to remember. Eventually she didn't need that either because she was a good rememberer... I just introduced ds to taking notes on his SOS this week. It really helps them to remember things, its not to be a cheat sheet though, but notes about what they are learning. Just like they would have done in a class room setting. She could study the notes prior to the test on the same day even.
Taking tests again (after they've been discussed and figured out) is a good learning device, if one is forced to stick with tests. Better, though, is (as a few folks above said): discuss, explore, find out what her thoughts are on the topic. She'll remember tons more from your chat than she ever will from an arbitrary testing system that oftentimes isn't all that well-written or conceived.
I know with SOS its easy to just let the computer teach the kids, but we have to remember we are the Parent teacher so we need to encourage the learning process in the best way we know how-- teach it to her again? I also love that you can send back questions leaving the wrong on in the spot so they can see the mistake they made , and redo with a correct reply. The only thing we do not send back when wrong are T F questions because for that to happen I told ds if he gets a test that is mainly T/f and he gets 5 or more wrong I will send them all back wiped clean. That is the only way to do those ones because its obviously easier to get it right that way lol. Of course if it were written out on paper they would see thier wrong answers and be able to correct them as well... Another idea is the print option! Have dd print her lessons out and keep in a binder or folder that she can refer to prior to her test as a "study packet". I think I am going to do this with ds! I love it! HA just came up with that! Thanks for your thread it got my creative juices going!
I really crippled my children over the first 5 years of homeschool because I NEVER required testing. I mean NEVER! I always used unit studies and I knew, without a doubt when the children got the information and its almost impossible not to get the material with unit studies because they are so submersed in it. Fast forward.... SOS.... the king of tests? Ok, I'm exaggerating, but it is hard for them. We have had success this week with reseting the quizzes and tests if they don't pass them. They have been using the problematic tests/quizzes as a study guide. The 65% is now 80% so, I feel good about that. I think I will change the quizzes to open page, see if that helps a little. I miss all the time I used to have for unit studies, but I'm still sooooo thankful for SOS, without it, we wouldn't be able to homeschool this year.
I wouldn't feel too bad about "crippling" your children. You probably aren't. How old are they? Unless you are using AO's academy, you don't have to do all the tests. I agree with you to make the quizzes open-book. Maybe you could skip some of the tests also. It may mess with the automatic grading, but if you want you can figure out their average by simple math. I would especially skip some of the tests if they are young. Then you can let them do some occasionally to get exposure to how the system works in schools. You may enjoy reading a book called, "I Saw the Angel in the Marble," by Chris Davis. He also has a blog: http://chrisdavis.wordpress.com/2011/09/ There are many articles about learning at home. It may help you see that you have been doing alright and that you aren't going to ruin your children.
we do the quizes as open book too because ds needs to have review more still with SOS, it has a LOT of information to absorb, but the church school he wants to go to uses it as a class room style course and he needs to be used to using it the way the teachers there do it. I am working with him to get him at ease otherwise we will home school another few years or untill I can afford a ten thousand dollar tuition lol
I didn't test much the first few years, either. And my now 17yo did exceptionally well on her ACT test, so obviously I didn't cripple her. And you haven't, either. How old is your daughter? I think the problem is the curriculum. We tried SOS; it didn't last very long at our house for the same reason!
My daughters, who are using SOS, are 15 and 13. I chose not to test them for the first 5 years because of my own experience in PS. I have a terrific short term memory and was always on Honor Roll, but rarely retained the material. So I decided that I would focus on alternative methods for the children to demonstrate their knowledge. ie, projects, essays, field trips, just talking about it, teaching others... My main issue every day is balancing work with school. I spend about an hour grading and reviewing SOS, then another hour working with the 2 younger children, grading and reviewing their work, which is fairly easy since they are in K and 2nd.
