HELP! can't fit in enough reading time

[AmyA]

I'm sure this question has been asked before but I am trying to make our schedule and I cannot fit all the time in the day I need. This is our 5th year using Tapestry and I have always seemed to struggle with this but this year with two in Dialectic it seems they don't have enough hours in the day to fit all their other subjects in and have discussion times each week plus we added spanish this year and typing. Something has to be left out but what? I know you are not supposed to do everything but I thought that was activities or maps or vocabulary. Does this mean leaving out an entire subject like literature?

Any advice would be appreciated

[Pat]

We did not have problems fitting in the Tapestry readings at the D level and I feel like we did a lot of things.

BUT without knowing what is already on your schedule, it's hard to answer this question. Can you post how long you spend each day doing school?

[AmyA]

I guess a better question would be.. is it ok to leave out an entire subject? I have a hard time deciding which one to leave out. Also how long do discussions usually take? I left an hour in our schedule for each one..literature and history. After I planned it all out they only have one hour a day to read. That does not seem like enough to complete the reading. thanks for taking time to help.

[Pat]

I think at the D level that an hour per week for lit and history discussion should be plenty. It will increase over time.

I still would like to know what your overall schedule looks like. What hours are your school hours?

One reason I ask is because at the D level a student might expect to have 1 -3 hours of home work from their school in a brick and mortar school, that after a standard school day. My D student did most of his reading outside of our normal school hours as he moved to D level.

I think that it would be unwise to drop history or lit at this level and the geography, timeline stuff we did rarely took longer than 15 minutes a week.

[AmyA]

The school schedule I have this year is from 8 to 3. maybe I need longer for school and I'm just expecting them to fit into last years schedule even though they are older. I was trying to keep them from having to do reading outside of school but that might have to happen. All three of my girls and now my son too love to read but last year we took a break from Tapestry partly because my youngest daughter really struggled to get the reading done and started to hate to read. Thankfully after a break and letting her read a lot of books that were fun she enjoys it again. I really like Tapestry and dont want that to happen again so I need to find some way to make this work. I also don't want them just trying to hurry and get their reading done and not really learn from what they are reading because they are in a rush. so far this is our schedule and times. they are not in order just subject and times

Bible -30min
Science-1 hour
Spanish-30min
typing-30min
Tapestry reading-1 hour (need more time here)
lunch-1 hour (by the time we make it, eat it, and clean it, it takes this long. lol)
recess/break 15 min
discussions Thurs and fri one hour each- science, literature, history 1 hour each
Math-1 hour
Spelling-15 min
Tapestry activites- 1 or 2 days for 30 min
tapestry maps- 15 min mondays
writing assignments- 3 days weeks 30 min.
current events fridays 30 min.

does this look confusing? I thought that discussions would take 1 hour because I have 2 dialectic and it seems to take longer. If I could stay to 30 min that would be helpful.

[Pat]

Your schedule looks much like mine. As does most of your allocation of time. We are in a small 3 family coop which will do some of the discussions and all of the crafts (yeah!)

On some subjects like typing, I'd go ahead and count that time for the time being, the good news with something like that is going to be finished hopefully in a few months but probably by the end of this school year.

I think with my older students I would start to think of the schedule as the time you integrate with them on the subject. I would see that sort of thinking for Science, Math, literature, history, and writing.

Let me use my oldest's math program as an example. We integrate with each other and do two things together. We go over the previous assignment (you could correct this on your own, but I find it easier to do it orally with him) and I "teach" him the next lesson. After that it's up to him. We use New Elementary Math; it's a program that sometimes takes him more than an hour to do a problem set. If it's a huge set then sometimes he gets to do it over two days, but usually extra time is his to do. For science sometimes I need to work with him on the labs as they include dangerous stuff.

This didn't happen over night, at first I had to work with him to assign things like the history questions over the week, but now going into his first year of Rhetoric work, I have confidence that his work will get done (except science, not his favorite subject).

Let me also note that what I'm looking ahead to is college where he may not be able to deeply and intently read everything assigned to him so at some point he needs to read both quickly and for information. I hope for now he's mostly reading deeply with little skimming, but at some point he made need to do both.

Now obviously, he didn't get there overnight, it took time. So you'll have to spend time getting your students to be able to both schedule on their own and follow through. AND I freely admit that my oldest has a bad case of older child syndrome so he's my steady child. My younger child who starts D this year needs more watching. However, I think in the end he can do it. He astounded me tonight by reading a huge amount of a book I assigned to him. I think sometimes I undersell him.

What I do is change my daily schedule to a daily checklist. So when I meet with each child I have check boxes that hold both of us accountable for what work he should have done.

Okay, here's my giant caveat: your family is not my family, I don't know them at all. So it is possible that everything I've said here is wonderful for me but terrible for you. So pick and choose what makes sense for them and you. PRAY!!! Test things, change them until you find what works.

[AmyA]

Thank you so much Pat for taking time to help me out. It helped knowing that someone else's schedule is similar to ours. We will see how this goes.

Thanks again and have a great school year.

[Karen Twombly]

Personally, I scaled back the subjects. I have one student who cannot read fast enough. I decided the most important part was to learn literary analysis of literature so I scaled back the amount of books read so that we weren't trying to go so fast that I could not properly teach those skills.

I did the same with History. I decided I wanted my kids to learn what to do with the information and how to research.

I found if I was pushing and pushing to force them to take on more than they could then learning stopped. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose. Added, there was no time for anything else like being missional and involved in our church and community.

[AmyA]

Hi Karen, That is how I'm feeling right now. I think they are busy trying to get the reading done that I'm not sure how much they are really comprehending. I am curious how much time other students spend on reading every day. Both my older girls read all the time and read well. I'm not sure if I'm doing something schedule wise that is not quite right. Do I leave out a subject? Literature? Church History? I have to say that my Upper Grammar Daughter is devouring her books and reading them after school for fun. I lightened her load this year and she is loving it. Should I do the same for the older 2?

[AmyA]

Watched a video on vimeo that Marcia made about planning and choosing from the "buffet" of Tapestry. Helped a lot! thanks marcia. feeling a lot better about choosing things.