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  • Collegebound? What to Do in 11th Grade, Part 2

    Collegebound? What to Do in 11th Grade, Part 2

    In the previous post about 11th grade, I noted this is the most important year for your collegebound teen. You can read the first set of priorities here.

    Now to the second tier of recommendations:

    Know Thyself

    This is a good time to have your teen come to a deeper understanding about how she is wired. The best way to accomplish this is to take a psychology course. She will use the insights she gains to help guide her decision-making during the upcoming senior year.

    Some of us are wide-open to experience—we can choose a college far from home and thrive. Others of us are more cautious. Choosing a school in unfamiliar surroundings, without an easy option for getting home, will add an unnecessary layer of stress to the college transition. Some of us are extroverted—we’re energized by meeting new people and forging new relationship, while plenty of us find breaking new ground draining.

    Figuring out what conditions make your teen thrive will be critical to choosing a college that’s a best fit.

    You can find out more about the Big 5 personality traits here. Consider psychology classes at Aim Academy here.

    Read Before You Buy

    You and your teen are closing in on the biggest financial decision of her life—much more significant and complex than buying a house or taking a job. Complicating our teens’ college decisions can be our own fears and motivations as a homeschool parent—it’s very easy to turn our kids getting into school—especially getting into a “good” school—into a validation of our decision to homeschool. We need to be self-aware of how this can make a complex decision-making process even more complicated and stressful.

    So before you head out the door to visit potential schools, get a frame of reference—read about college admissions, financial aid, choosing a major, and campus life. A few hours invested in education yourself will help eliminate time wasted on schools your family just can’t afford or that don’t offer the course of study your teen needs.

    Here are a few books to get you started:

    Fiske’s Guide to Colleges 2023 by Edward Fiske (the bible on college admissions)

    Choosing College by Michael B. Horn and Bob Moesta

    The Price You Pay for College by Ron Lieber

    Paying for College by the Princeton Review and Kalman Chany

    Websites: CollegeTransitions.com and GrownandFlown.com

    Start Looking

    Don’t pack all the college decision-making into the senior year. Start looking at colleges now. Make visits, explore careers—in tangible ways show your teen the goals he is working so hard to reach. Visiting potential schools and places of employment will provide motivation to stay focused and industrious. This year visit schools that represent different categories–small and private versus large and public, for example. Seeing the contrasts among schools will help your teen better grasp what feels like a good fit for him and what doesn’t.

    Make sure you visit the departments your teen may be interested in–this is much more important than the school at large. Meet some of the professors. Sit in on a freshman-level class. If your teen is hoping for scholarships, making an impression during this preliminary visit will help those decision-makers put a face to his application when it arrives (always a plus).

    To Test Well, Prepare

    Unfortunately, the homeschool teen’s test scores are weighted more heavily in the admissions process than those of her conventionally-educated peers. Those applicants have composite scores created from class rank, GPA, and school profile to add to the mix. Your kid will have her essays and interviews to level the playing field, but first she needs high test scores to get to that stage.

    Testing is a game we can all learn to play better. Tell your teen to approach it as you would a sport. Train. Lean into what she learns about a growth mindset, optimism, grit, and resilience in that psych course she’s taking. Above all, be well-rested going into any high stakes test situation.

    Take a test prep course like this with Kathryn Gomes and this with Lili Serbicki. Read the latest edition of  Gruber’s Complete SAT Guide. You wouldn’t send your child to her driver’s test without familiarizing her first with the course—same deal with the SAT and ACT. Prepare. The more your teen knows about the test, how it is scored, and what content and skills will be tested, the less stressed she will be. The more she practices, the better her scores.

    And to seal the deal, sign your teen up for Study Skills: Notetaking and Study Skills: Learning Strategies with Rebecca Robbins. When you consider how much your teen will invest in a college education, these classes are a small price to pay for your teen to learn how to study right and to learn how to prepare best for gameday.

    What to Do in 12th Grade

  • Collegebound? What to Do Senior Year

    Collegebound? What to Do Senior Year

    So here you are—the final stretch. Congratulations. Don’t worry. Be happy. Decide to enjoy these final moments with your young adult. Your influence as a parent is waning. After this year, you’ll be wise to wait to be asked before giving your advice. (Remember, I’m speaking with hindsight now.)

    If you’ve been ticking off mission-critical boxes since your teen was in 8th grade, then you only have a few milestones left to accomplish. This is the last in the Collegebound? series, and here are the big three priorities for your senior:

    1. Make time for college applications and all that entails.

    I had no idea how much time this would take! If your child applies to competitive schools or hopes for scholarship awards, then applications must be thoughtfully and carefully prepared. Applications to top choices should take hours, if not days, to finish. If essays are involved, then those should go through multiple drafts and edits. (Find a critical reader or writing coach to help your teen with this.)

    The whole point of the application package is to give decision-makers the best, yet representative, picture of your teen’s academic potential, sense of purpose, and unique characteristics. A college admissions director once told me colleges aren’t looking for well-rounded students. They want a well-rounded student body made up of diverse and unique students. Take that to heart and submit an application focused on what sets your teen apart.

    So, make room on your 12th grader’s fall schedule for preparing applications, essay writing, college interviews, and final college visits. Even if your teen doesn’t apply for early admissions, get those applications in by the end of December to show drive and organization. (Note to the wise: many scholarship decisions are made with the earliest batch of applicants, so the early bird gets the worm here.)

    You can turn all this work into an elective on the transcript. Or consider block scheduling—do all the college work in the fall, including test prep for the final SAT or ACT, finish up other academic credits in the spring.

    If you’re not sure how your child can put his best foot forward, get help. My friend Farrar Williams and her colleagues at Simplify Homeschool do just that, and they specialize in homeschool students’ college decision-making and applications.

    2. Don’t slack off (too much).

    Some kids make the mistake of showing a lightened load the senior year because their minimum requirements for graduation have been completed. This is fine if your teen is heading to the local community college or doesn’t hope for scholarship consideration.

    If not, then the course load needs to still show challenge and academic interest. Meeting the minimum requirements for graduation looks like lack of ambition. Importantly, take a math course—pre-calculus, probability and statistics, data science, AP Calculus. Your teen doesn’t want to tackle the college math requirement after a 12-to-18-month break from doing math.

    3. Learn to manage (and grow) money.

    Your teen will be living with the weight of the financial decisions she makes regarding college debt for a long time after she earns her degree. For many graduates, this severely limits their life choices: They may have to take a job they don’t really want, long delay owning a home, or live with you for years after finishing school. (The latter may not sound too bad to you, but it is psychologically undermining for them.)

    Even though this is my last point, looking back, I think this is the most important priority for the senior year. Ideally, you’ve been working on this life skill with your teen up to now as well. Your senior needs to learn to manage money, debt, loans, and financial aid. He will need your help—you might need help! It is so complicated you might end up thinking it is intentional—I did. I lost my religion quite a few times working with my kids’ financial aid offices (I had three in college simultaneously and that right there was half the problem.) Create a filing system. Keep everything handy and well organized. You’ll need this information repeatedly.

    Enroll your teen in a good finance class. Solutions from Dave Ramsey are obvious choices here, but there are others. (We personally followed Larry Burkett’s advice—Dave Ramsey’s forerunner—don’t take on more college debit than the likely starting salary of your first job following graduation. That amount was relatively easy to eliminate quickly.)

    Your teen should have a checking and savings account to manage, as well as a debit (or credit) card with a maximum limit set relatively low. These are the fundamentals.

    Now to really position your teen for success, help her learn how to make money grow. I’m taking a lesson from my sons, who got interested in investing very early through another mom in our homeschool group. They paid for most of their college because of this, along with finding atypical jobs during high school that paid better than most. They then started investing again as soon as they graduated and entered the job market. Today, they both prefer to invest rather than spend, and it has given them and their families the freedom to live where they please and take jobs they love. They passed on top tier schools for a humbler state school with a much lower price tag. Sometimes I still hear them lament this, but I don’t think they’d have the lives they now enjoy had they taken on that boatload of debt back then.

    Thanks to all the readers who’ve been through this series with me. For those who want to start from the beginning, start here.

  • 3 Reasons to Take Advanced Placement (AP) Classes

    3 Reasons to Take Advanced Placement (AP) Classes

    Aim Academy Online aligns its classes with Advanced Placement (AP) and College Level Examination Program (CLEP) exams. Both are a type of equivalency exam–they are an alternative, cost-saving method for earning college credit. Furthermore, most of our AP teachers have served as AP readers and completed AP training.

    If your kids are collegebound, here’s why the AP exams, in particular, should be a part of your high school plan. (More on the CLEP exams later.)

    See AAO’s AP classes.

    AP and CLEP exams helped my four kids finish college on time (if not early) and earn merit scholarships. All then graduated with little or no debt and most with double degrees. Strategic use of AP and CLEP exams were a critical part of why that happened.

    I founded Aim Academy Online in 2011 so your family could have the same opportunities.

    Here are three compelling reasons to make AP exams during high school a goal for your collegebound kids:

    1. AP exam scores are an objective measure of a homeschooled student’s academic achievement.

    AP exams are developed with ongoing input from professors at a representative sample of U.S. colleges and universities–including private, public, religious, and elite. This team determines the standard content and skills students are expected to master in the college-level course represented by an AP exam. (This is why AP exams undergo periodic revision—this team continually surveys colleges to make sure they are testing the most common course content and skills.) AP exam scores provide objective evidence to back up the grades and coursework on a homeschool applicant’s transcript. Admissions offices and merit scholarship committees can be confident your child is ready for college success since AP exam scores show he or she has already completed college-level work.

    2. A passing score on an AP exam converts to college credit at no additional cost at most colleges and universities.

    AP exams are scored on a scale of 1–5, with a 3 considered a passing grade at most colleges. More competitive schools will require a 4 or 5 on some exams to earn credit. Each school sets their own AP and CLEP policies. Search on “AP exams” or “credit by exam” on a college’s website to pull up that school’s list of accepted exams and required scores.

    Other methods, such as transfer credits or a portfolio review, may have fees attached–it’s not uncommon for a college to say, we will accept these credits but you will need to pay the cost per credit we charge–in that case, you save yourself the time of taking the class, but you don’t really save any money.

    My kids accumulated college credit through multiple ways during high school and college, and the AP exam route netted us the most credits at the lowest cost (including the cost of the AP class and AP exam) of all other methods. The main reason I say this is because of benefit #3–the scholarship money AP scores can unlock.

    Read Next: 5 Ways AP Exams Can Cut College Costs

    3. AP exam scores heavily influence a homeschooled student’s merit scholarship consideration.

    First a definition: merit scholarship is not based on financial need. It is solely based on the student’s high school achievements—academics, leadership, and extra-curriculars.

    Put yourself in the shoes of a scholarship committee. They want to award scholarship funds to the worthiest candidates and to not be accused of favoritism or subjectivity, especially if they are passing out taxpayer-funded scholarships.

    Homeschooled applicants often have non-traditional documentation and grades awarded by parents (not the most objective of measures). Please do not throw tomatoes at me—this is their perspective of our objectivity about our children. (Do you think your friends are objective about their children’s achievements and talent? You may be free from bias, but the rest of us often aren’t.)

    AP exams are among the most standardized and objective of measures. Grade inflation runs rampant everywhere, so these are not reliable measures of academic achievement in most committee members’ minds. The SAT and ACT have cultural biases embedded in them and have been shown to favor students from privileged backgrounds.

    As AP exams measure college-level achievement, they provide better evidence that your child is college-ready than grades or an SAT/ACT test, which measure high school level achievement only.

    Most importantly, AP exams show your child is willing to challenge him- or herself and desires high academic achievement—a more reliable predictor of college graduation than high school grades or test scores.

    Does this kid want to work hard and learn and advance in his or her studies? Then that is the kid we should give a helping hand to!

    Tips for Scoring High on AP Exams

    Aligning coursework in middle school allows students more time, at a gentler pace, to achieve college-level mastery by the end of high school.

    AP exams measure college-level achievement. To do well on AP exams, students must first master high school level course content and skills. Introducing more advanced coursework in middle school (for example, starting Algebra 1 in 7th grade) gives kids time to reach college level mastery in AP courses in 10th–12th grades.

    I learned this lesson the hard way. I enrolled my sons in AP US History in 9th grade. They had never had a decent U.S. history course—we’d read all of Joy Hakim’s wonderful History of US series but leaping from that into college-level history was very stressful. They passed the exam, but it was not a pleasant experience for them or me. Without a solid background, they devoted so much time to AP US History that other coursework suffered. Nothing about this experience supported a love for learning–a primary reason I was homeschooling in the first place!

    With my next child, Kayte, we anticipated all the AP exams she might want to take by the end of high school, and we started folding some of the content and skills on those exams into her middle school coursework.

    How did we know what content and skills were covered on the AP Exams? We downloaded the course descriptions at AP Central on the College Board’s website.

    Even if your kids never take an AP exam, Aim Academy’s alignment with AP and CLEP course content is gradually preparing your children for college-level work no matter where they attend–private, public, religious, or elite--we are here to help you make sure they are well prepared!

    Read Next: 5 Ways AP Exams Can Cut College Costs

    See Aim Academy Online AP Classes.

  • How to Evaluate What Your Kids Write

    How to Evaluate What Your Kids Write

    The world needs to hear what your kids have to say that is uniquely theirs to share. Here’s how to help them.

    Meet the Six Traits of Great Writing.

    I can still remember my confusion as I stared down my first pile of student essays. Now what do I do? How do I decide who gets an A and who gets a C? Is this good writing for a fifteen-year-old, or not? Even more mysterious—what do I say to help them improve?

    Ever feel that way when looking at your kids’ work? I sure did. Math always seemed obvious—this answer’s right, this answer’s wrong—but their stories, essays, poems? What do I tell them? I’m their mother! Seems likely I will be too hard or too easy on them. Odds are slim I’m going to give them feedback that’s on the money.

    All that changed when I learned about the six traits model for teaching writing. Suddenly I had a language to discuss writing with my kids and students they could understand—and their writing took off.  As their writing coach, I knew what was working well. I knew what to suggest that they try next to improve.

    Download Six Traits of Great Writing for Teens Rubric.

    Here are the six traits in a nutshell:

    While following the conventions of the English language for grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization plays an important role in great writing (it’s trait number six), it isn’t our most important concern.

    The number one trait of great writing is ideas. When you read something your child has written, first respond to the quality of the ideas in the story or report. Are the topics discussed interesting, unique, thought-provoking, or insightful?

    Your kids will be eager to gauge your reaction to what they produce. Begin with feedback about the sections of the paper you find most intriguing or thought-provoking. Focus here so young writers learn that their ideas matter most. With beginning writers this was often the only aspect of the assignment I responded to. If writers don’t pack their essays, reports, and stories with solid ideas, none of the other traits matter—readers won’t read what they’ve written. So, invest lots of time learning about and working on the most important trait: ideas.

    The second trait of great writing is organization. Ideas need to be presented in an order that makes sense to the reader. Is there a logical progression in the way ideas and details are revealed? Readers like to have their curiosity piqued; they also enjoy the unexpected. A logical progression can include an interesting fact or question at the beginning or a surprise ending. Young writers need practice using common organizational schemes (there are only a few)—chronological order, order of importance, compare-contrast, cause and effect, lists, and summaries, as examples. If the order of ideas appears to be random or illogical, show the writer where you get confused.

    The third trait of great writing is word choice. Consider the vocabulary your child has used. Is it academic enough for a science report? Is it descriptive enough for a short story? Are certain words often repeated and should be replaced to keep readers interested? Is your child’s vocabulary growing and can you see this in his or her writing? Praise your kids for attempting to include new words in what they produce, even if misspelled or not quite right for the context. Reward experimentation and risk-taking. A rich and varied vocabulary keeps readers reading.

    The fourth trait is sentence fluency or syntax. Syntax is the way a writer builds sentences. Great writing has a rhythm to it. This is created by varying the length of sentences—some are short, some are long—or by varying the types of sentences. For instance, some begin with an introductory phrase like this one.  Others are more complex and include several phrases and clauses strung together—like the next one. This variety is pleasing to the ear and adds interest, which keeps the reader engaged. And keeping the reader reading is a writer’s number one job.

    The fifth trait is voice. This may be the most difficult to understand, but if ideas are the foundation of great writing, then voice is the capstone. Voice is the writer’s personality shining through. I tell my students to think of it this way: in the same way you can identify your mom’s voice calling from the kitchen or a friend’s voice on the phone, you can tell a writer’s voice by the ideas, organization, word choices, and syntax he or she commonly uses. Kids will certainly try many different voices as they grow as writers, but eventually they will each settle into habits of writing that identify a piece as uniquely theirs. We should celebrate the distinctives of each child’s writing and emphasize the value of this trait. God loves our diversity—we should too.

    That’s a whirlwind tour of how to evaluate what your kids write. I hope this brief introduction gives you some tools to work with. Want to give it a try? I conscientiously tried to model the six traits of great writing in this article. How did I do? Can you give me feedback on my ideas? Do you recognize the organizational scheme I used? What about my vocabulary—do I have enough variety? Have I varied the length and types of sentences? And even if you’ve never met me, do you have an impression about my personality? (Do you want to meet me?) Finally, have I observed the conventions of English for grammar, punctuation, spelling, and capitalization? Or do I have distracting errors?

    If you can answer any of those questions, that illustrates how the six traits model gives readers a language to discuss what a writer produces so he or she can improve.  I’d love your feedback because I want to help you raise writers in residence—I think it’s a sacred mission. The world needs to hear what your kids have to say that is uniquely theirs to share.

    Aim Academy English classes are writing-intensive and focus on teaching students the six traits of great writing.

  • SAT English Prep Course Updated for New SAT

    SAT English Prep Course Updated for New SAT

    As of 2021, 100% of the SAT’s English content is now based on multiple choice performance – there’s never been a more important time to ensure your student’s MCQ strategy skills are honed and ready! 

    My SAT English prep class has been preparing students for testing success for almost a decade. This summer, our seven-week mini-course is a comprehensive preparation for the most current, up-to-date version of the SAT in the areas of Reading and Writing MCQs. We will seek to demystify the English sections of the SAT and have fun learning the ins and outs of each category.

    We will:

    • Prepare for the reading section of the SAT. This will include practicing evidence-based passages, inferring meaning based on tone, diction, and context clues, and more.

    • Prepare for the writing section of the SAT. This will include practicing strong grammar, diction, and punctuation skills in preparation for the SAT Writing questions which require a student to spot errors and choose the most concise, correct phrasing of a sentence or paragraph structure.

    • Prepare for SAT-level vocabulary. In addition to providing vocabulary resources and virtual flashcard sets, I will provide a good set of strategies for improving vocabulary in general – for the SAT and beyond.

    • Students will complete MCQ passages and full practice exams in their own time as well as live in class with my guidance. I will provide feedback on their areas of weakness and help them succeed in their individual goals.

    For more details and enrollment options, check out our SAT English Prep description page.

  • 12 Things to Know About How Children Learn*

    12 Things to Know About How Children Learn*

    The child

    1. Happy children learn more than sad children. Stress and negative emotions drain a child’s cognitive resources. Laughter boosts a child’s memory capacity.
    2. Play is essential for emotional wellbeing and cognitive development.
    3. An element of risk (risk of failure, risk of danger, risk of pain, risk of embarrassment, etc.) produces a greater sense of accomplishment and reward.
    4. Persistence predicts progress more than talent or intelligence.
    5. Children who believe they will succeed achieve more than children who expect to fail.

    The teacher

    1. Praise and encouragement help children persist.
    2. Criticism and punishment undermine motivation.
    3. Targeted feedback is essential to help kids improve.
    4. Assignments should be challenging but attainable with effort.

    The environment

    1. The learning environment should be secure, comfortable, and free of distractions.
    2. Surround children with others who know and love them.
    3. Children should be free to move around, change positions, and take a break without asking permission.

    *These research-based principles of learning are true for how you learn, too.