Un/Homeschooling

Lesson 6: Record Keeping

Record Keeping Strategies

The filling out of journals, portfolios, charts, and forms are some record keeping strategies practiced by homeschooling families.

A narrative journal may be kept daily, weekly, monthly, etc. It may be kept by the parent or by the child or both. It may contain lists of activities, descriptions of trips taken, specific learning observed, etc. The information in a journal can later be transferred to a portfolio or to forms provided by the appropriate educational authority.

Some parents write in their journals at the end of each day, noting every learning activity. Most parents, however, write less frequently, noting only more important activities. The ages of children may influence the frequency of journaling.

A portfolio is a place where you collect your children’s work. It may be a scrapbook, filing cabinet, box, or some combination. It may contain written reports, workbook pages, lists of books read, journal notes about various learning activities, artwork, videotapes, photos, etc. To prepare your child’s portfolio for assessment, choose pieces that show specific learning achievements.

Some parents create charts divided into subject categories to more easily list learning activities for later transfer to required forms. This chart may be called a grid. It may list academic subjects along one axis and days of the week along the other. Such a grid may be provided by the supervising authority. Unschooling parents often find it difficult to divide their children’s learning activities into grid categories, and may feel that the result is an incomplete record.

On forms, some schools and evaluators accept common descriptions of learning that occurs in everyday life, others are more likely to accept descriptions of learning activities given in educational jargon. At its most complicated, for example, a trip might be called an ‘interdisciplinary unit study using learner-initiated activities,’ reading a book for hours might be called ‘uninterrupted, silent, sustained reading.’ With some effort, your child's activities can be translated into various subject categories such as critical thinking, physical education, history, science, math, fine arts, contemporary literature, language arts, etc. Activities that are difficult to break into a specific category might be described as ‘project learning’ or ‘block learning.’

Although these translations can be made, parents of homeschoolers may prefer to stand up for their living and learning philosophy by avoiding such academic language to describe an ‘education’ that is intended to prepare children for life in the real world.

Eventually, you and your child may choose to prepare a transcript for submission to school, work, or military applications. As with other traditional forms, an unschooler’s education may be difficult to present in such a manner. Mary Griffith provides an example of an unschooler’s transcript in her book, The Unschooler’s Handbook.

Cafi Cohen, on her webpage, http://www.homeschoolzone.com/hsz/articl... “And What About College?,” compares transcripts vs. portfolios for submission to colleges.

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