Co-op Tips: Manage a lively class!

 I am teaching a lively class of Middle-Schoolers this year.  It’s a chemistry and physics class; there are many labs and hands-on activities.  What are some tips?  First, have all the materials ready.  You can’t afford any lags.  Fine. Time you spend sorting labs is time the class starts to act up. Give the kiddos clear instructions.  My class needs step by step directions whenever we do any activity.  I have large bins we use to help contain messes.  (I’m looking at you, Elephant’s Toothpaste.)  Manage seating.  Separate any pairs who get into mischief.  (Yes, I separated a pair.) Tuesday, one boy’s squishy burst under the table.  We had a discussion about bringing toys in general.  We use two tables. I rotate kiddos to create different lab partners every week.  Make clean-up a consequence.  Normally, everyone cleans up after labs—not if they act up.  In fact keep a list of chores to assign as a consequence.  I have a white-board with the list posted.  (Yes, it does include cleaning toilets!) We also have a 15 minute session at the end of Co-op class to clean up and catch up.  It’s a good time to discuss any issues which may arise. Run a tight ship!  I’m glad the kiddos like the class.  I don’t want things to get out of control.

Editor in Chief

 Are you creating your own curriculum?  Are you familiar with the Editor in Chief series?  These are reading passages with errors.  It’s fun to see if you can find all of the errors.  I use these exercises regularly when I teach Composition classes.  Mind you, I think Composition should include grammar, writing, handwriting, emails, résumés, thank-you notes, etc.  Editor in Chief dove-tails well with Easy Grammar and Zane-Bloser Handwriting if you are designing your own Language Arts curriculum, especially when combined with classics.  I love Kolbe’s Primary Literature textbooks to help parents teach the classics.  If you create your own vocabulary and spelling lists, these resources constitute a robust curriculum.

Are you on top of grading?

 We’re winding up October.  Are you on top of grading?  Many online schools require quarterly reports.  Don’t forget to record graded work, such as daily math lessons and test grades.  Take photos!  Pop them into a digital folder for the portfolio.  Make this the best year yet!

Kiddos with Special Needs

 Just like yours, our Co-op has kiddos with special needs.  We make accommodations for them in our high school Co-op class.  In one case, I assigned a kiddo who’s 15 to the middle school class.  It’s been a good fit.  Every class a different child sits next to C so everyone gets to know each other.  In reality, all of the students have had a turn helping C with activities.  

The Brit Lit class has two kids who struggle with literature.  I just made the executive decision to use easy to read versions of most of the literature.  I’m assigning paragraphs instead of essays.  The boys will still be exposed to all of the books, novels, poems, etc.  The assignments will just be easier to understand.  I’ve done this for individual students in a Brit Lit class before.  

In Chemistry, there are thirteen teens.  Two of the kiddos are actually middle-schoolers.  Three others have learning differences.  How do we cope?  First, everyone works in teams of two.  Secondly, Rob and I team-teach.  Each of us spends time coaching the kids struggling the most.  We limit the number of problem sets for one teen.  In a few cases, we let siblings work together on spreadsheets.  In other words, we push all the students a bit out of their comfort zones, without overwhelming them.  We already know one or two teens just won’t be able to do the harder concepts.  So what.  Everyone is still learning some Chemistry.

Here is my challenge to you.  Do you have teens with special needs or learning differences?  Are they in your Co-op classes?  Could you ask a mom to stay and work with him or her individually?  In other words, can your Co-op make the extra effort to see that this child gets exposed to harder subjects?  It is much easier to exclude the teen from hard subjects.  We don’t.  Even if the child doesn’t get as much out of the class as some of the others, he or she is still learning.

Take advantage of themes!

 It’s fall!  Go ahead and plan lessons around pumpkins and apples.  Today is Mole Day!  My Chem class makes moles.  We give away tootsie mole pops to the best mole toy pattern.  I baked mole hole cookies (Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies.)  Take full advantage of a fun theme!  After all, isn’t this why you home-school?

How to punt!

 Wednesday’s class was typical.  Everyone was in the basement because the cleaners come once a month.  Rhys has PSAT tomorrow and will miss Chem class.  He missed three classes to visit his sister in California.  Happily, he can spend Wednesday mornings catching up because his mom has errands in Stafford.  Wednesdays are Brit Lit.  Rob covered my class.  Meanwhile I went over the Chem lesson with Rhys.  One of the Brit Lit kiddos, Jacob, needed help writing a résumé.  Rob was in business management.  After Brit Lit he helped Jacob with the résumé.  Sofia, Jacob’s sister, is in the Tuesday Middle School Chem class.  I decided to see if she could do the same ionic compound activity as the high schoolers do.  Yeah, she can!  In between, Sofia ran upstairs to make copies.  Co-op classes are like that.  Moms pitch in to help herd kiddos.  Families swap lessons based on ability and experience.  (Rob is growsing about reading The Green Knight. ) Hey!  This is how we punt!  We join Co-ops and home-school for a reason; our goal is to educate, which means we have to make adjustments as we roll.

A little more heresy…

 Is it okay to skip a concept or even a module?  What about an entire lab?  The Chemistry class I teach for Co-op is struggling through specific heat.  The most recent edition of Apologia’s Chemistey textbook has moved the module from 2 to 12, which should tell you something.  Most of the module is straight forward.  Let me tell you, the calorimetry lab is NOT!  The calculations in particular are hard because you have to set two equations equal to each other.  (Experiment 5.1 in the textbook is another challenge.)

So what if you encounter a problem you don’t know how to solve or a complicated lab?  Did you give it a good try?  I don’t mean just read it and weep.  Did you even Google the topic to see if there was a video?  Was the video just as confusing?  Have you even resorted to AI?  At this point you probably enlisted your husband and made it a group project.  Are you at the point where you feel defeated?  Stop.  Skip the problem.  Move on.  Just because you cannot understand one lab or one algebraic problem doesn’t mean you should abandon the subject and admit defeat.  Continue with the subject.  By all means ask your friends if they have encountered the issue and can help.  (They might know a tutor.)  Look, you can only do what you can do.  Stop beating yourself up.  Even my husband, Rob, who teaches math and is extremely smart, has encountered problems he couldn’t solve.  Yes, as a matter of fact, I did resort to AI, Google, and videos.  Yes, it did become a family project.  Yes, I did suggest just to skip it.