Year 6 Course Outline

I completed the first draft of Kieron's course outline/checklist. A couple of readers commented that they could not get to Sean's Year 9 syllabus pdf, so I'll have to figure out what is going on with that -- I made a Google group as a repository for my PDFs, and I seem to be able to get there just fine, but apparently others can't (???).

Anyway, here is the Year 6 one. If I can find a better way to upload them, I will. It is a bit less, hmm, complete than Sean's, because the way Kieron's school year is happening, I invent subthemes based on what I think he would like or what he expresses an interest in. It is almost like units, or Main Lessons perhaps, except that they overlap considerably -- studying one thing at a time makes me claustrophobic!

So for example, right now for science he has been studying reptiles, by his request, but I'm also strewing some space/earth science type resources because Sean is doing Earth Science and it makes sense to me to use some of my research and collecting for Kieron's benefit. He just came in to narrate some material about black holes so apparently he must have picked up one of my strewn books. If I plan something he is not that interested in, I pass through it quickly --but I try to have more resources available if he is interested.

We have a big overarching theme of Discovery and Exploration this year -- which you can imagine encompasses just about everything, but it gives me a sort of focus -- a "golden thread" to follow.

In history/geography right now, in addition to the main texts he is reading, we are just finishing a sort of main lesson about Vikings. And in our read alouds, we seemed to focus for a while on World War II. The Vikings and WWII connected because of Snow Treasure, which is set in Denmark. Now we are reading the Flying Dutchman which serendipitously also connects to Scandinavia, because the story starts in Denmark, and the ship then sails down into the Atlantic.

You get the picture -- I am building the syllabus as we go. I prayed for joy at the beginning of this school year and this approach seems to bring to light at least a few little joyful sparkles.