The Scope and Sequence by Barbara Frank

Despite the ever-changing amount and quality of knowledge in our world, many organizations and institutions establish their own versions of “One Body of Knowledge.” Public and private schools generally use a Scope and Sequence to plan their school year. This is a document that results from a committee’s decisions about what children should learn and when they should learn it. It lists all the subjects to be taught in each grade.

Many homeschoolers find a Scope and Sequence valuable, as it gives them a framework and a timetable, which can be comforting. But they should keep in mind that a traditional Scope and Sequence is arranged in cyclical fashion. It keeps coming back to each subject each year, adding a little more information each time while reviewing what was taught in previous years. This is so that the children who didn’t pick up much the first time get additional opportunities to do so in subsequent grades. Those who did pick it up the first time, however, must content themselves with receiving small bites of the subject each year, and repetitive reviews that they don’t need. That can pretty much kill any interest they might have had in the subject at the beginning.

A child’s curiosity doesn’t follow a Scope and Sequence. Once he’s discovered something interesting, he wants to learn more about it right then, not a year later. Providing him with books and resources related to the subject will allow him to learn until he is sated in that particular area. Child-driven learning has much more staying power than learning about a given subject at a certain time just because it’s on the Scope and Sequence for that year.
A Scope and Sequence is set up for the convenience of the classroom teacher, who must try to aim for the middle of the wide array of abilities that each group of students possesses. That is one of the greatest disadvantages of group schooling, and something the homeschooling parent doesn’t have to worry about, thanks to the opportunity for one-on-one teaching that homeschooling provides. Nevertheless, some homeschooling parents prefer to use a Scope and Sequence as a framework for their homeschooling.

Obtaining a Scope and Sequence

There are many ways to obtain a Scope and Sequence.

You can:

• request one from your local school district

• obtain one from a homeschool curriculum company (A Beka provides a detailed Scope and Sequence on its Web site): http://www.abeka.com/Resources/PDFs/ScopeAndSequence.pdf

• obtain one from an encyclopedia company; some hand these out when exhibiting their products at homeschool conventions

• do an Internet search using the phrases “Scope And Sequence” or “Lesson Plans”; one large site full of lesson plans is www.lessonplanspage.com. Some states have replaced the phrase “Scope and Sequence” with “Standards of Learning”; an Internet search using that phrase and your state’s name will tell you if your state uses “Standards of Learning”

Other versions of One Body of Knowledge can be found in the many books published over the past few decades that list recommendations for what a child should learn at each grade level. One specific example is the series of books written by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. entitled What Your “Nth” Grader Needs to Know. You can download a related Scope and Sequence by going to http://www.coreknowledge.org.
Books like those in Hirsch’s series are useful if you need help deciding what to cover. They’re generally divided by subject, and contain many ideas and book lists for your use. Of course, in any of these books, the determination of which subjects to cover and how to cover each is merely the opinion of the author combined with his or her research. You may agree with all of it, some of it, or none of it. But if you’re mostly in agreement, this type of book could provide you with a foundation to work from, which may make you feel more secure.

If you choose to base your child’s home education on a framework culled from this type of book, try not to look at the author’s suggestions as requirements. The pressure you and your child would be under to cover every single recommendation in the book would surely result in burnout. Instead, set priorities by considering which recommendations you deem most important, and which would be of the most interest to your child.

(Excerpted from The Imperfect Homeschooler’s Guide to Homeschooling by Barbara Frank.)

Copyright 2011 Barbara Frank/ Cardamom Publishers

About the author:

Barbara Frank has been homeschooling for 25 years. Her latest book is Thriving in the 21st Century: Preparing Our Children for the New Economic Reality (Cardamom Publishers, 2011). You'll find her on the Web at http://www.thrivinginthe21stcentury.com and http://barbarafrankonline.com/blog.php