Tips & Tricks: Taking Notes

I know in school a lot of kids have trouble with taking notes. This is a skill they will need for all of school, college and even some jobs they will need to take notes. So, it is important to learn and master a skill like this. I was a very studious child in school and took many notes in my time there. Here are some things I did.

Each class had its own section in a binder or even its own binder

loose paper with notes were in here
I used notebooks for notes as well with every class having there own

If your teacher says "this will be on the test" or "you need to remember this" then it is best to write this down
If there were any vocab words or bold/italicized words in the textbook I write those down and what they mean
Any equations get written down along with 1-3 example problem for how to solve or use the equations
Important people mentioned and what they did write those down
If something is mentioned a lot it is worth writing down
The main idea of each lesson should be noted
Be sure to look for any footnotes at the bottom of the pages. They often have extra explanations for things.

Sometimes after getting a test/quiz back and comparing it to the notes that you made can help you better understand what the most important parts were. Not all information is important or needs to be noted but test/quizzes will give you a better understanding of the kinds of things that are important. Sometimes the worksheets that you do in class have information that is important as well and they need to be written down. Here are pictures of my actual notes I took from my Japanese textbook. Normally I would write the vocab words down but I did that on flash cards instead.

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Tips & Tricks: Making a Review

I recently posted on social media the reviews that my daughter did. They were for the 1st 6 weeks of our 2nd grade year. I got asked a lot about them. How did I make them? How did your daughter remember all of this? I also got comments that it is too much, public school does not do that, your history is too involved, etc. So let's start off with how I make a review. For math it is very easy I make a list of everything she learned. On the last week of that 6 or 12 week any math she does that is on that list counts towards the review. Anything on the list that is not done during the week I give her a few problems on each. Because I want to make sure that she has understood the concepts I make the problems hard. If they are too easy there is no way for me to know if she really understands or if she can just do easy problems. For history I make questions based off what I have read from the textbook. I pull out the key information. We also do social studies and geography. I make questi

Tips & Tricks: Grading

When grading first thing you need to do is check your state laws on homeschool. Some states require you to keep record of your curriculum and and grading while some don’t. I do not have to keep any records or grading. Since I use Timberdoodle they have an awesome online scheduler that I use. It has all the curriculum that we use and in the check boxes I put the grades. At the end of each year I keep the scheduler pages so I have records. Below is how I grade things. I also do not show our daughter the grades or tell her them. I don’t want her to worry about getting a bad grade. When she’s in middle school and high school grades that’s when I’ll start letting her know about grade. My grading system: Pre-K - 2 Grade: she will not see the grade E: excellent; no extra work needed; 100-90% S: satisfactory; give a little extra work; 89-80% N: needs improvement; give a lot of extra work; 79-0% 3 - 5 Grade: she will only see letter grade if she wants to know her grade A: 100-90%

Tips & Tricks: Class Schedule

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