What order should I do the books in for elementary?
What order should I do the books in for junior and senior high school?
What makes course an honors credit?
Why don’t you sell workbooks, I see them on other sites?
Why don’t you have audio books for your elementary series?
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What order should I do the books in for elementary?
- The philosophy is dramatically different between our elementary and secondary series of books. We want you to focus on the fundamentals of reading, writing, and math in the elementary years. Science should never interfere with the time needed for those basic skills. Therefore, our focus is on discovery and observation not on acquiring specific knowledge or a specific skill set. When you reach seventh grade we then focus on science as a required subject in which you must memorize terms, grasp specific concepts, and be able to apply those concepts concretely and abstractly. However, we don’t know what science you’ve done in elementary nor what concepts you’ve covered. So, you don’t have to emerge from sixth grade with specific knowledge.
There is an argument to be made for doing the elementary series in order. However, there are many who have chosen a book covering a time period that particularly interests the student (and parent). We accommodate this by letting you know in the helps & hints book what concepts we expect you to know from a previous book in the series. If we don’t cover it in sufficient depth you can do a quick encyclopedia look up or internet search to bridge the gap. It’s elementary so no one has trouble but we have help resources available if someone needed.
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What order should I do the books in for junior and senior high school?
- You can find information on what order and what prerequisites are needed in our Course Sequencing page.
- What makes a course an honors credit?
- Any of Dr. Wile’s high school credit courses starting with biology are an honors credit on the transcript if these conditions are met:
- The entire book is completed (no skipping sections or chapters).
- All tests are taken closed book and achieve at least an 80 overall grade per the methodology in the introduction to the answer key.
- All experiments are performed and documented in a laboratory notebook (doesn’t have to be a formal report for each experiment, just documentation as outlined in the introduction to the textbook).
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Why don’t you sell workbooks, I see them on other sites?
- Our preference is for each child to have their own blank, lined, spiralbound notebook for each textbook. This notebook would be used to record study notes as they’re reading/doing activities, copy any questions asked and their answers (lesson review, comprehension checks, chapter review, and practice problems). Copying a question causes the brain to store information in a more effective manner as well as requiring the student to think about the question as they’re copying it prior to answering. A blank notebook allows them the freedom to write as much or as little as they want (or make a drawing as big or as little as they want) rather than being constrained by a preprinted box or number of lines or feeling inadequate because they didn’t use all the space available.
However, if you prefer the preprinted notebook experience you may download them under the product resources link on the product resources page, at our Product Resources page, or purchase preprinted spiral bound products from our resellers on the Where to Buy page.
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Why don’t you have audio books for your elementary series?
- The elementary series is conveying the scientific concepts through observing the concept in real life. Each lesson is centered on this observation. The lessons are three pages long and most of that space is taken up with the list of supplies and steps to perform the activity. The narrative merely lays groundwork for the activity or explains what happens. In the absence of the activity most of the narrative on the audio book would be superfluous since it is explaining what was seen. For each lesson (one day of science) there’d be less than one minute. The longest lesson would be less than three minutes. I encourage you to look at our sample lessons to see how we differ from elementary series that convey the concepts through narrative which makes sense to offer in an audio format.
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