Home-Schooling With the Harvard Classics

Harvard Classics are a source of home-schooling material.

The Harvard Classics is a 50-volume set of book-after-book of history, philosophy, religion and folklore, in addition to a 20-volume set of fiction. This multi-volume set, published in 1909 by Harvard University president Dr. Charles W. Eliot, occupies over 5 feet of shelf space and covers every major figure of the 20th century. Leveraging this comprehensive set of tools with the needs of home-schooled students can be achieved through organization, preparation and lesson development inclusive of all subject areas.

Instructions

Map Out the Instruction

1. Map out a curriculum plan subject by subject. Organize each subject on a unit of study that takes two weeks. When setting up a history plan, look at all the history titles and organize them by week. If you are teaching by a traditional 16-week semester, select eight historical figures to plan two weeks of instructional time around them. Follow this pattern for each subject area: religion, literature, sociology, philosophy.

2. Integrate the subject areas by planning a number of activities across all subject areas within each unit. For example, if you're teaching a unit on history, include some essay and reflective writing to help with grammar and composition skills. Include reading and note-taking to help with comprehension and study skills. Incorporate mathematics activities by mapping out area and graphing out time lines.

3. Align the mapped out curriculum with the standards of the state in which your child is home-schooled. Most states require that students take the same state assessments as public-school children. Include all subjects and content that are written into the standards. A way to align standards to curriculum is to print out several copies of the state standards, cut each standard into a strip and then place each standard strip next to the planned instructional activity to which it applies. If you're left with too many strips of a certain standard, this will be your clue that it must still be covered somewhere.

Supplement and Develop Routines

1. Develop a routine to each unit developed. Begin with an introductory reading, response writing that includes a prediction about the upcoming content, followed with some discussion on the upcoming reading. This routine can open up each unit and lesson for every subject.

2. Continue with a planned reading, but keep it to small, manageable chunks broken up with discussion every page or two, summarizing main ideas. Routinely have your child take notes while reading. Once all reading is finished, introduce questions, other content area activities such as a mathematics or science exercise, quizzes, and a final writing assignment.

3. Locate supplemental material, such as archived versions of newspapers and magazines from the time period of the person or unit under study. "English and English Traits," by Ralph Waldo Emerson for example, might call for a study of the Romantic Age. Other writers of the Romantic era such as Christina Rosetti or Edgar Allen Poe can also be studied.

Tips & Warnings

• When aligning lessons to state standards, go to your state's department of education website to locate them. Many sites contain U.S. maps that populate with a selected state's standards, and then list them out by subject area. Some states have adopted the national Common Core State Standards; these can be located on the federal Department of Education website.

References

• Bartleby.com
• Common Core State Standards
• Academic Benchmarks Standards Search State Standards