Tony Silva

High School Science in Your Home
Physical Science
http://www.scienceforhighschool.com
$79.99 or $110 with Lab Kit

Physical Science in Your Home is the first in a unique series of science programs that are based on independent research and application of the scientific method. Author Bridget Ardoin has put together an effective tool for covering all of the major topics in a typical high school physical science program divided into two 13 week semesters with answer keys and quizzes for each week.

Learning to Learn

The beauty of High School Science in Your Home is its approach to teaching high school students how to learn through independent research and structured exploration. The student uses the resources available – library books, textbooks, encyclopedias or the Internet to research and answer a series of questions each week. The “workload” is easy to organize with five to 25 questions. Keeping their research in a notebook with the study guides and labs makes reviewing your student’s work a snap.

To help along the way, the student resource is provided in loose-leaf format with a tab section for the lab manual. The teacher’s edition provides sample answers you can compare with your student’s research or lab experiences. Our middle school aged son took to the coursework as we assigned sections based on his current progress in our textbook-based curriculum. A naturally independent learner, he said he liked the method more than the structure of a traditional textbook; his papers bore that out.

On the flip-side, this curriculum has the potential to fall short of a structured program like ours when the student cannot find the answers, or finds answers that do not make sense. For example, given the assignment to research the meaning of “isotasy” the content our student found on the Internet was considerably different than the guidelines in the Teacher’s Manual – even though both were talking about geology. The same thing happened a few questions later when asked to explain how “dome mountains” are formed. You’ll want to observe carefully and when answers appear to come out of the blue, suggest alternative sources for your student. This is not a problem unique to High School Science in Your Home products – it is a result of different sources reporting on different aspects of the same topic.

Ms. Ardoin states after research into what areas are required for a student to be considered to have taken a high school physical science course. She included topics that give a student a well rounded introduction to physical science. However, she wisely advises parents to save the student’s work and quizzes. This is true of any high school coursework as some colleges and universities will ask for portfolios from homeschool students.

Quibbles & Bits

Most of the equipment and materials needed for labs is available in the home or at places you probably shop. For your convenience, Ms. Ardoin offers a lab kit for $40. The curriculum and lab kit combined are $110. You probably do not need it, but having a lab kit available is a comfort to those of us who do not like what happens when they stick their hand in the “junk drawer”.

The greatest advantage of research-based curriculum is also its greatest potential for failure. In order for the student to successfully research a topic, he needs to understand what the curriculum is asking of him. This is easily fixed by a higher degree of teacher involvement.

Unfortunately, no degree of teacher involvement can help a kid understand something that is unclear to both student and teacher. A glaring example in this Physical Science program comes in the very first lab. The student Lab Manual guides the student through the steps of tying a rope around both of his wrists and then looping a second rope around the wrists of a partner so that the two students are linked together. Next, they’re asked to write down their observations, results and whether or not they agree with their hypothesis. The problem? It is not explained in the Lab Manual that they are supposed to unlink themselves without untying the rope. Both manuals note that the required equipment is “a piece of rope, about three feet long and no larger than one inch in diameter…” You don’t find out until step three of the experiment that there is a second rope.

The High School Science in Your Home is bound to be a hit among homeschoolers pursuing an independent learning model. We’ll be reviewing their biology and chemistry offerings in future articles. If you can’t wait, visit their site and look over the sample lesson and quiz pages there.

Thank you for including some of the negatives as it is important to me when considering a curriculum.

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