Jenna

Learning Together: The Heart of Teaching

March 24, 2020 by Jenna

Go back in time with me. Remember that moment—it may have been 20 years ago, or maybe it was a few months ago—when you started to seriously think about what this crazy homeschooling thing would look like for you. You had a picture in your head of you and your kids learning together. Maybe you saw your children huddled in your arms as you read to them. Maybe you saw books scattered on a table, forgotten, as you talked over the moral implications of the Civil War. Or maybe you saw yourself on a nature walk with your children, looking at birds, flowers, or the shapes of clouds together.

When that image came to you, you probably weren’t thinking about why you homeschool or what you hope to accomplish in the next twelve or more years. It was just a little dream of what your journey might look like day-to-day. And you know what the most important part of your dream was? You and your kids working together to learn something. That’s really all that education has ever been—teachers and students learning together.

But the problem is, there’s usually only one of you. When looking for solutions to their homeschool needs, many parents believe that the best resources are ones that their children can use completely independently. Just give the kids the textbook and let them go. Textbooks can be a key part of your homeschool, but they’re not the most important piece. A textbook just can’t replace what you can offer your children as a personal, involved teacher.

Children miss out when they only have a textbook.

You hear a lot about learning styles and customizing your children’s education to their needs. But the truth of the matter is, there’s no magic formula or combination to tell you how your child learns. No child is strictly a tactile learner, strictly a verbal learner, or strictly an auditory learner. Some kids are genuinely good at learning by reading from a textbook, but not all are. In fact, few can learn well from using only a textbook.

Most kids can’t just sit down with a book and siphon up information. They have to work with it to get it. They need to squish it through their fingers, taste it on their tongues, watch it bounce around, and hear what other people think about it. And a book can’t do all that. A book can present information, ask questions, give assignments, or even suggest activities. But it can’t hold a conversation or let a child really experience the information. Even a well-designed textbook will leave your children wanting if that’s all they have for their education.

If you’re involved in their learning process, you can customize their education. When you’re working one-on-one with your children, you’ll know which activities will help them learn and which won’t. It’s not about assigning every activity and hoping that doing them all will help them learn. It’s about picking the ones that are best for your child.

You can encourage understanding through communication.

When I was in high school, I remember moments when a teacher would misspeak or write the wrong number up on the board. Or there were times when students misheard or misunderstood something. When the class was comfortable and open with the teacher, the misunderstanding was usually something minor to fix. All we had to do was ask a clarifying question and we could move on. But there are some students who don’t feel comfortable asking simple questions. Who don’t want to interrupt no matter how confused they are.

Children need someone guiding them through their lessons to help them through moments of confusion. Someone they trust, who they can communicate with easily. My teachers weren’t always good at recognizing when they’d lost a student, but when you’re working directly with your children, learning together, you can usually tell when they’re following or when they’re still two pages behind.

It’s time for a reality check.

Now, we’ve been talking about an ideal—how things should be, and how things are meant to be. But we need to take a good hard look at how things are. Is this one-on-one teaching really possible for you? How many students are you teaching? How much time do you really have to devote to teaching your children yourself? If you’re going to have to spend 20 to 30 minutes teaching per subject and per child, then there’s no way you’ll have time for much of anything besides teaching, especially if you’re teaching more than 3 children. And that’s why you might want to allow your kids to work independently sometimes.

But remember that this isn’t school at home. You’re not confined to teaching specific subjects to specific children at specific times. You can shape your homeschool so that you can realize that dream you had when you started. And so that you and your children can go forward learning together. What will that look like? That’s up to you. It could mean year-round homeschooling. Or it could mean supplementing your teaching with video courses. Maybe it means forgetting about grade levels and teaching everyone together. The point is, it’s up to you how you make it work.

One-room school houses didn’t work because of government regulations and state standards. Having the right rules in place has never been the thing that makes classrooms work. They work because there’s a teacher invested in the lives of the students. At the end of the day, a textbook is just a tool. What children really need is for someone to direct them and partner with them in learning. And who better than you?

New Homeschool Video Courses

February 18, 2020 by Jenna

New video courses are available for homeschool families! Each course includes age-appropriate segments, opportunities for hands-on learning, and video demonstrations. We’re excited to use some colorful new textbooks and materials with several of these courses. If you’d like to get a sneak peek at these courses, we’ll be introducing them all on our Facebook page, and you can look for the sample videos on our website!

Upcoming Video Courses for 2020

Focus on Fives with Mrs. Rulapaugh

This past year, Megan—one of our blog writers—had an opportunity to use the new Focus on Fives materials with her daughter for K5. Because of her experience with the textbooks, she’s had a wonderful time with her daughter. On the other hand, the video course gives you an opportunity for the same experiences with the added benefit of having a teacher. This new video course takes advantage of the materials for an exciting introduction to early learning. Mrs. Rulapaugh, who also teaches K5 Math, prepares her students for first grade with lessons in phonics and reading as well as heritage studies and science. This course is absolutely packed with exciting video segments that keep kids engaged and learning. It has animated stories and songs, biblical themes, phonics stories, science explorations, activities with Hopscotch, and more.

A day’s worth of lessons averages 60 minutes, but children will have many opportunities for breaks, games, and activities that keep them having fun. Mrs. Rulapaugh is excited to help her students love learning!

Reading 3 with Mrs. Walker

Kids who enjoyed Reading 2 with Mrs. Walker will be excited to join her again for Reading 3! This course uses Adventures in Reading 3 (3^rd edition) with a travel theme. Mrs. Walker wants to inspire wonder and discovery in her students as she embarks on thoughtful discussions about each reading. As they journey through the material, children will have an opportunity to practice critical thinking and phonics skills. In this reading adventure, each lesson will include colorful segments of animated poems, story times, and more. As always, Mrs. Walker ends her lessons with a giggle to bring fun and joy to learning!

Pre-Algebra with Mr. Harmon

In this new Pre-Algebra video course, Mr. Harmon seeks to help students understand math by using simple explanations with real-life examples. Students will expand on the concepts they learned with him in Fundamentals of Math so that they can be prepared for Algebra 1. Math-Splaining segments use an illustrative approach to explain difficult math concepts for students.

United States History with Mrs. Bullock

A history class should be far more than a dry recitation of dates and facts. Mrs. Bullock encourages her students to get into the minds of historic figures so they can consider the thoughts and attitudes that led to events in American history. In addition to knowing the facts, she also wants her students to ask why things happened the way they did. This course uses the new United States History (5^th edition) materials and covers history from the discovery of the American continents through to the present day. Mrs. Bullock includes segments that offer glimpses into the lives of American families, present unique historical perspectives, bring primary source documents to life, and provide dramatic readings of speeches.

Spanish 3 with Mrs. Kuhlewind

This course builds on the principles Mrs. Kuhlewind introduced in Spanish 2 and continues to help students develop skills in speaking, reading, listening, and writing. Her goal is for her students to become comfortable with a new language so that they can have confidence in using their new language skills. To that end, Mrs. Kuhlewind’s segments offer opportunities for Spanish listening and vocabulary building. The segments also provide introductions to Spanish cultures, architecture, cooking, and dialects.

Please note that this course will only be available as an online video course. A DVD option will not be available at this time.

Precalculus with Mr. Matesevac

The key to success in advanced mathematics is perseverance. Mr. Matesevac encourages his students to press on to master the challenging concepts of Precalculus so that they will develop wisdom and maturity. For students who apply themselves, this course provides a solid foundation for college-level math. Students will use the new Precalculus (2^nd edition) materials which balance study of the foundations of calculus with practical, real-world applications. Mr. Matesevac works out difficult problems through Math Applied video segments to give students a different perspective on each problem.

Please note that this course will only be available as an online video course. A DVD option will not be available at this time.

Our team has been working hard to develop these video courses and fill each lesson with useful segments. We can’t wait to share them with you and your children! Which course are you most excited for?

Choosing Curriculum to Encourage Confident Readers

January 28, 2020 by Jenna

It’s wonderful to have options when you’re teaching your children. When something doesn’t work, you can always try something else and keep at it until your kids get what you’re teaching. So a lot of homeschool families wind up using curriculum from a bunch of different publishers for a single grade. And it works. But BJU Press has designed certain subjects to support each other in unique ways. Specifically, students who use Phonics and English 1 and Reading 1 together will be better equipped to be confident readers.

In K5, all of English language arts are integrated—you teach it all together. But in Grade 1, English and reading count as separate subjects. They’re separate, but they still correlate. The concepts and progression of skills support each other in both subjects. If you use a different curriculum for English or reading, then your child will miss the benefits of a correlated reading program and may find learning to read harder than it needs to be.

Opportunities for Practice and Review

Practice and review opportunities are an intrinsic part of each BJU Press textbook. Children need to see concepts repeatedly to develop automaticity—the ability to do something without thinking about it, or automatically. But when they’re just learning to read, children need more practice and review opportunities of the phonetic concepts they learn in English than are provided in the textbook itself. Reading 1 follows the same progression of skills as Phonics & English 1, so that children will find more opportunities for practice and review of concepts they learned in English while doing their reading books.

Application Skills

What’s the difference between practice and application? When we’re practicing a concept, we’re usually seeing the exact same concept over and over again. The more we see it, the more familiar it will be. But application is actually a little different. Application introduces a familiar concept in a new situation. It gives us a chance to apply what we know to figure out what we don’t know. It’s a critical thinking skill that most of us use regularly even if we don’t realize it. Because Phonics & English 1 and Reading 1 correlate to introduce and develop concepts at the same time, children will not only learn a new concept, but also have the opportunity to apply it.

For example, a phonics lesson might introduce the _at word family. Your child has practiced reading the words at, cat, and bat as a part of the phonics lesson. Later, in his reading lesson, he finds a new word, hat. Because he knows the h sound and he knows the _at word family, he can apply what he knows about the two sounds and read the new word. As he learns to recognize new words based on what he knows, his confidence in reading grows.

Please note that, while the progression of concepts do correlate, the lesson numbers don’t always correlate. There are fewer reading lessons than there are phonics lessons. This helps children to stay ahead in phonics and to master concepts in reading. We have created a correlation chart to show you which lessons you should be teaching together.

Prepared to Be Confident Readers

When English and reading lessons support each other by adding practice and application, your child will be better prepared to learn new skills and concepts going forward. First, she learns the skills she needs to be successful in Phonics and English 1. Then, she learns to use and expand on those skills in Reading 1. When she comes back for another English lesson, she’ll be prepared for it because she’s had time and opportunity to practice and apply what she learned before. She’ll have more confidence and certainty about what she knows in both English and reading.

Dangers of Mixing Curriculum

But what can happen if your English curriculum and reading curriculum don’t support each other? Your English materials may not prepare your children adequately for what they’ll encounter in reading, and their reading program may not give them the practice and application they will need to be confident in their phonics and English lessons. Programs that don’t correlate often introduce skills at different times. Children who are constantly running into new skills that they aren’t prepared for will either become overwhelmed by learning, or they’ll resort to guessing. Guessers can easily become confused and frustrated when they don’t understand why their guesses are right or wrong.

It’s easier to encourage your children to become lifelong readers when they have confidence in reading. Children who become confident readers are more equipped for success because they will be better prepared for the reading challenges they will face in later grades.

Finding the Silent Night in the Busyness

December 20, 2019 by Jenna

How silent was the night of Jesus’s birth, really? Caesar Augustus’s census had brought many people to Bethlehem. The town was overcrowded. The animals would have been noisy around Jesus’s manger. Angels were singing and proclaiming in the fields. So most likely, all was not calm around the virgin mother and the holy infant. In fact, that night may have been one of the noisiest, most chaotic nights in Judea that year.

You might feel like the Christmas season is similarly chaotic for your family. Given all the holiday activities, volunteer opportunities, gifts to purchase and wrap, and visits with friends and family members, it’s no wonder we often feel like we need to do less during this season so we can focus more on the gift of Christ’s birth. But all of those things really are good, especially for creating lasting memories with your children. And you won’t find the silent night by not celebrating the season.

You’ll find the silent night in the stillness after the celebration. After you’ve reunited with friends and family, after you and your children have delighted in and rediscovered familiar stories and carols, after you’ve played and rejoiced through the day, that’s where the silent night will be. It’s in the faces of sleepy children when you tell them the story of Jesus’s birth and God’s most precious gift to His people. It’s in “the Son of God, love’s pure light,” who came to us at “the dawn of redeeming grace.”

Merry Christmas, from BJU Press!

Using Different Editions: What You Need to Know

November 19, 2019 by Jenna

You’re looking for books for your youngest child. Because you’ve gone through all the same subjects with your older children, you’ve got almost everything you need already. You just need new copies of the consumables. You pull up the website to order them, only to find that a new edition has come out. The things you need aren’t available anymore. Can you use the materials from different editions together?

I get this question a lot. I love being able to tell parents that, yes, you can use the two editions together, but it’s rare. A lot of times, mixing editions seems cost effective, but it isn’t worth the hassle you’ll go through trying to make them compatible.

How Do Editions Change?

Let’s be real here. At BJU Press, our writers don’t completely rewrite a textbook to produce a new edition. That just wouldn’t be practical, especially when some content may not need to change. So what do we change before we release a new edition of a textbook?

• College Readiness and Best Practices

National standards for each subject and best practices for teaching different age levels tend to change regularly. We don’t actively adjust our materials to align with standards. However, we do research and make adjustments in the students’ interests. That way, we can assure parents that their children will be prepared for the next grade level, standardized tests, and current expectations for college freshmen. Additionally, research about how children learn continues to show educators that children need more than paragraphs of information to learn from. They need activities, visuals, and opportunities to use technology in a safe way. Many new editions update the textbooks according to that research. Sometimes these updates are more noticeable in the teacher edition than the student edition, but they do appear in both.

• BJU Press Standards

We also want our textbooks to measure up to our standards. Each new edition should have clear biblical worldview integration, teach critical thinking skills, and show children and teens that they can take joy in learning. We also add new technology resources as they become available.

• Design and Page Layout

Design is a key component to successful textbooks. Can a child understand certain kinds of information better from a paragraph or from an infographic? Even the amount of white space on a page can help or hinder a student’s learning. In many new editions, we’re adding design elements to encourage learning and comprehension.

• Errors and Feedback

Even in carefully prepared textbooks, mistakes happen. Issuing a new edition gives us a chance to fix errors from the previous edition. We also take the opportunity to incorporate some of the suggestions we’ve received from educators using our materials.

Problems with Using Different Editions

Not all new editions will have every type of change I’ve listed, but they usually do have several of them. And sometimes, the amount of change a textbook needs means that it will get heavily rewritten. Whenever we release a new student edition, we’ll also release updated versions of corresponding materials so that everything matches up. It doesn’t matter how much or how little the student edition has changed.

Some of the modifications we make may seem minor, but they can still be difficult to work around if you’re using materials from two different editions. Design updates can completely change the layout of the book, meaning all the page numbers are different in the new edition. That doesn’t sound like a big deal until you’re trying to grade your child’s reviews.

Updates to national standards, teaching strategies, and our own standards can lead to big changes in review questions and activity manuals. You’ll have to double check both versions to see which questions you have answers to, or create answers for anything you don’t have an answer to.

Obviously, total rewrites or heavy rewrites won’t be compatible with older editions, but even light changes to student activities and lab manuals can make the corresponding answer key obsolete.

Using Out-of-Print Materials

We always highly recommend that you get the updated materials, but we do understand that getting a whole new set of books isn’t always an option, especially if it’s an expense you weren’t expecting. You may be able to find out-of-print materials through third-party sellers, especially nonconsumables such as teacher editions and answer keys.

However, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to find student activities or labs from a third-party seller. In those cases, you can use the newer labs and activities with your older materials, provided that you get the newer answer key as well. Activities and labs often teach skills that are important for the course, but aren’t always directly covered in the student edition, so you don’t have to have the new student book. However, please note that this may not hold true for science courses Grade 7 and above. Life Science (5th edition) incorporates new lab activities that relate directly to skills from the student edition. These same skills weren’t covered in the same way or as directly in Life Science (4th edition). When activities do relate directly to the student edition, you can always skip them.

Unfortunately, if you are unable to find an unused copy of a student worktext, we can only recommend that you invest in the new book.

Of course, it’s up to you if you want to try mixing editions anyway. We wholeheartedly believe that each new edition is an improvement in the material. And, for you, it’s always worthwhile for your sanity and peace of mind to be using materials that are meant to be used together.