Our First attempt at Exams - AmblesideOnline Year 2 Term 1
and how exams are meant to be viewed in a Charlotte Mason Homeschool
Exams…something I didn’t think I would EVER do in these early years of homeschooling, but they loomed above me whenever my eyes glanced through the menu bar on the AmblesideOnline website when I went looking for resources. I didn’t get around (slash, didn’t ever really actually plan on doing!) exams last year, as it was just one of the many things that I wasn’t able to wrap my head around in our first official year of Ambleside. But, I gave it a bash at the end of our first term of Year 2 (we start our school year in January here in South Africa) and I’m SO glad we did!
First of all, I had to take away every preconceived idea of what an exam meant to me, and start ‘fresh’. I needed to put aside the worry and concern about how well my child would or wouldn’t do, and rather look at it as a way of realistically assessing her learning for the term. And, because we had just read the book Understood Betsy (Everly’s absolute favourite book so far) and had gone through Betsy’s own positive experience with Exams; when I mentioned that we would be doing exams too, Everly was so excited and would ask me every day if today would be her chance to ‘do exams’. What a thing! I never would have imagined such a scenario.
While prepping for our first set of exams, I (unfortunately), found myself getting very caught up in how ‘far behind’ we seemed to be when I read Celeste Cruz's post on her blog, Jouyous Lessons. We all know in our hearts not to compare, but reading that post hit particularly hard because before reading it, I felt as though we were SO far ahead and doing #allthethings and going above and beyond what most homeschoolers were achieving with their Second Grade (or Grade 2 here in South Africa) students. In retrospect, it was actually a very good lesson in maintaining a humble heart. I tend to get a little plucky about homeschooling (maybe it’s because us homeschoolers often feel like we need to justify our decision to homeschool in the first place. And therefore whatever we are doing surely must be far better than anything mainstream schools may have to offer…said with a very strong note of sarcasm for all my non-homeschooling readers and followers). In any case, it was a hard pill to swallow to realise that even though I thought we had aced Year 1 (click here to read), there is always room for improvement, and that I need to remain open & teachable, always. And now after that little heart check haha, let’s get back to the main point of this post, and that is exams in a Charlotte Mason homeschool.
Here is a lovely summary from the Ambleside website on what exams should be when following their curriculum:
"In general, the purpose of exams is to let the student show what they know, not what they don't know. The principle to use in shaping an exam for your child is: how can they show what they know?" -- Karen Glass
Karen also wrote a post about "What if my child doesn't remember?" on the AO Advisory blog. AO mom Celeste Cruz talked with Cindy Rollins about exams for The Mason Jar podcast. And don't miss Wendi's post about exams on the AO Advisory's Archipelago blog.
With the above in mind, I printed off the sample questions from Ambleside (click here) and changed a few questions to fit what we covered for Maths, and took out the bits and pieces we didn’t get around to doing. This is another helpful element to the exams; they reminded me of the things that I need to include going into Term 2. For us ,these were things like Recitation, Second Language Study & Hymns. It seems to be a common thread that the Riches (the diverse & enRICHing elements of a Charlotte Mason-inspired curriculum that go beyond traditional academic subjects. These include picture study, composer study, nature study, Shakespeare, hymns, folk songs, poetry, and more. The term "riches" signifies the many ways the curriculum aims to nurture a child's love for learning and appreciation for beauty and wisdom) always get pushed to the bottom of the ToDo list, and the more academic subjects always seem to take priority. I am aiming to be better at this going forward, and I’m trying to work out how I can include my younger children in the riches. I’m aiming to have these things happen during morning time/when we are all together and not just during official ‘school time’ for my oldest. I have found that meal times offer a good opportunity for Bible stories, poetry, folk songs and picture study.
I’ve written the full post over on my blog, please click the button below to pop on over and finish up this post there: