How I Scheduled Year 7 (Fifth Time)

 This summer I will schedule Year 7 for the fifth time, although this is the first time I will be scheduling Year 7 since the big changes in 2023.  The first time I scheduled Year 7 was before the addition of most of the science, so it also was significantly different from the three Year 7s of my middle students.  We are also participating in an online discussion group this year, so I will have to adjust our schedule for some of the books in order to match the discussion group schedule.  We will be reading Plutarch with an in-person group, so I will not be adding Plutarch to our schedule at all this year.

As I always do, I begin by saving a new copy of the Year 7 chart from the AO website.  I use the regular year chart rather than the "basic" or "lite" chart to begin from.  If I were lightening this year, I would still start with the regular schedule and then consult the basic schedule for ideas, but I don't expect to need to lighten this year for this student.  (If I were new to AO, I would be more inclined to begin from the basic chart.)

I like to keep my chart schedules as Google Docs, so I upload the .doc version of the chart to my own Google Drive, then I save it as a Google Doc, change the name, and delete the original .doc from Google Drive.

I look first at the Bible assignments.   The Bible schedule is new since I last went through Year 7 with a student.  I notice that Genesis is assigned in fairly long chunks, while Luke is much shorter.  We have usually two Psalms and part of a chapter of Proverbs each week.  Since we'll be working four days a week, these assignments divide nicely into one per day, but they are quite uneven.  I showed this to my student and asked for her preference.  Would she prefer to keep the assignments as they are, or would she like me to put Psalms and Proverbs together into one assignment and split OT into two per week?  She prefers to keep them as they are, so that set of four assignments makes one chunk that is complete without any tweaking on my part.  We can always adjust this if we get a few weeks in and find it isn't working well.

This student is a great reader, so I am going to schedule our bio beginning in week one and reading at least one chapter per week until we finish.  I will be making significant changes to the Spiritual Formation schedule this year, because I want to include books that used to be scheduled and I may choose to use a different pace.  If I were sticking with what's scheduled, I might use More Than a Carpenter and shift the biography readings so that they always fall on weeks when there is no MTaC assignment.  That would leave this part taking up only one slot out of four.  

I like to put Fearfully and Wonderfully Made, which is optional this year, into that same section of work.  That's also where I like to put Saints and Heroes, which I like to include even though it's optional.  I'm going to do some rearranging and adding, and whatever changes I make I'm going to schedule through the entire year.  I don't want to look back at this category at the end of Term 1 and not be able to remember what I planned to do!

Now I'm looking at the history assignments.  At first glance, I see Birth of Britain, Asser's Alfred, and Bede/Malmsbury.  Bede/Malmsbury has only one week overlapping with Asser's Alfred, and I think we can handle that so I'm going to think of those two rows as one weekly slot.  So far, that leaves me with only two slots of the four I want for history, so I'm going to move Saints and Heroes into the history section of the schedule, giving me three weekly assignments there in Term 1.  I may leave it that way for Term 1, just in case my student finds it helpful to read Birth of Britain in two sessions per week.

Literature seems to have six weekly readings: Age of Chivalry, Beowulf, History of English Literature, Ivanhoe, Once and Future King, Watership Down.  I could split some readings into two weekly slots, or I could find other assignments to move into those slots, or I could move two literature assignments into another category.  I think I'll try putting Grammar of Poetry into a slot in literature, and then I also will need a weekly rather than a daily slot for poetry this term so I'll put it there.  (We're going to read poems in Middle English and translate them this term, so we'll do just one day a week.)  Well, maybe not.  Looking back, I see that in the past I've sometimes scheduled rewriting a poem twice a week and Grammar of Poetry twice  week so that we have four slots altogether in a separate category for those two types of work.  But I've put History of  Art/Story of Painting into literature or history in the past, so I'll keep that in mind as an option.

Ah.  I will put History of Art for Young People, which I'm using instead of Story of Painting, into the open history slot.  No, I won't do that because I think my student needs two slots per week to read Birth of Britain.  I will put History of Art for Young People in an open Literature slot.

We're reading Watership Down and our Shakespeare play with a group, so we will not start reading those until Week 7.  Because of that, I will schedule Beowulf to be read twice a week for the first six weeks.  (Beowulf is already well known to this student, so I don't mind reading it at a faster pace.)  We'll be reading Hamlet together with the group, during the meeting, so I will just put a placeholder in the schedule to account for the time spent in the online meeting.  I'm realizing that I'm customizing Year 7 much more than usual this time, so perhaps my blog post won't be particularly helpful.  Adjusting the schedule to mesh with group readings definitely makes this process more complicated!

I'm making a grouping called Citizenship, and I'm putting How to Read a Book, Ourselves, the logic book we're reading instead of Fallacy Detective (which we read in Year 6), and Penny Candy in there.  I will split up the How to Read a Book chapters a bit, so they spread more across the term, and then I'll fit the Ourselves assignments into weeks without a HtRaB assignment.  We started Ourselves last year too, so I'll be using the Year 8 schedule this year for that book.  That gives me three readings a week in that category, and some weeks just two readings.  I may leave it that way so that we have some wiggle room on days with extra activities.

I made a group called Geography that has Brendan Voyage, Lay of the Land, Map Drill, and Map Work.  I will print a map to label for map work as the boat in Brendan voyage travels, and I will choose a map for my student to study and mark a blank copy of each week for map drill.  I think this term we may use Seterra.com's quiz over UK Cities instead of using a printed map for map drill.

The Enrichment section has artist and composer, handicraft, nature study, and probably our John Muir Laws video every week.

I'm creating a Poetry section that has Grammar of Poetry twice a week, doing half of a lesson each time, and also includes specific poems from the poetry anthology that's on the booklist, two per week, that we will translate into modern English.  That's how a scheduled these on a previous run through Year 7, so we'll try it that way again.  I honestly don't remember how it went!

One decision I need to make is whether or not we will do copywork.  If we do not do daily copywork, we will do dictation at least once a week still plus we will do a commonplace book either once a week or daily.  I will think about that more as I keep working on the plan.

While I'm thinking about it, I'll make a row for Math, one for Recitations, and another for Written Narration.  I put four Os in each square in those rows because we'll do them four days a week.

Circling back to Bible and Citizenship, I've decided to have OT, NT, Psalms, and Proverbs each in a separate row so that one weekly block of work is dedicated just to actual Bible readings.  Then Citizenship will have How to Read a Book, Ourselves, Penny Candy, Selfish Pig, and our logic book.  That leaves Fearfully and Wonderfully Made without a place to land right now.  We're doing Selfish Pig instead of More Than a Carpenter.  I've moved the biography into Term 2.

Science will need some thought.  Some of the science books require no activities, so I'm going to put those together in one set.  I probably will sit down with some of the science books to see what activities might be recommended, and then to decide which ones we want to do.  Whatever I decide to do, I will put that on the schedule.  I expect to end up with two science assignments every day.  It's possible we'll have three, but I don't think I will need that after I shift assignments around to fill in gaps.

I will also add a section on the schedule to work with a writing handbook, probably with one short reading each week and then another row to assign revision of a written narration.  That may also be where we put grammar, which we'll do just once a week.  I'm not sure yet if we'll use Our Mother Tongue or another book I have.

Book of centuries may fit in our history section, if I move History of Art into the literature section that only has three assignments a week.

I will also need to add rows for Spanish, Latin, and Old English so we don't forget to work on those.  Musical instrument will need a row, and so will physical activity.

Before I'm done, we'll also select our recitation passages for the term and put them on the schedule.

Looking at the science in more detail, I think I will have two science "slots" each day.  One will have Adventures with a Microscope, Great Astronomers, First Studies in Plant Life, Secrets of the Universe, and the Sloane Weather Book.  Assignments can be slightly shifted so that Adventures and Wonder Book never have assignments in the same week, so they count as one weekly assignment together.  For Plant Life, I plan to use the Sabbath Mood guide, which has lessons for 33 weeks instead of just going through the chapters in Plant Life.  Some lessons include a reading from Plant Life and some do not.  We're meant to read chapters 1-4 of Plant Life this term, which corresponds to lessons 1-6 of the Sabbath Mood guide.  Also, looking at lessons 7 and following, those can definitely be separated safely from 1-6 because they do not need to use plants we started growing previously.  Therefore, I will schedule Sabbath Mood's lessons 1-6 this term, but I need to rearrange the assignments to be sure we don't spread them out so much that our seedlings die.  Looking carefully at the schedule, I don't believe I need to move anything.  I can schedule lessons 1-6 of Sabbath Mood's guide during weeks 1-6 without having more than four assignments each week in my first science block.  I will only have three assignments each week during weeks 7-12 of the first term, but I don't mind because we will have extra activities at that point in the term this year.

I do want my student to observe the plants every day and make notes in a journal, so I am adding a row on its own to the chart that I am calling "Observe Plants" and marking with four o's in each weekly cell in the chart so we can do this task four times each week, which is every school day for us.  My student and I just picked out a notebook to use for those records.

We also have a notebook for recording weather observations every day.  I will add a row to the schedule to remind us to make those observations.

I have a second Science block each week, which gets the reading assignments for Signs and Seasons along with two more rows, each row having one field activity assignment for the week.  That gives us three weekly science assignments in that block.  That means that Fearfully and Wonderfully Made could fit into the empty row in this block.  (It's not a science book; it's really more spiritual formation, but that doesn't matter.)

After talking with my student about some options, I'm adding a block called Writing that will include Commonplace, Diagramming (our grammar option for this term), Dictation, and assignments from a Writing Handbook.  I'm actually going to order the first volume of the writing curriculum from Karen Glass, so we may use that somewhere this term, but maybe I'll do my own thing right now and add that in a later term.

Looking down the list of daily and weekly work, I find I have left out physical activity, so I add a row for Exercise with O's for each day.  I am also missing Timeline and Book of Centuries.  Because I don't really have a good place to put these on the schedule, I think I will drop Timeline this term.  I do have four assignments in History each week already, so maybe I'll put Book of Centuries as a daily item but only give it two O's so it has to be done twice a week.  I look up the nature study focus for this term and write it next to Nature Study on the schedule.  I also need to add a row for musical instrument practice.

I still need to sit with my student and choose recitations, but I think we're mostly done with the schedule now.  This feels really full, but I also think that if we get into a rhythm it will probably be fine.  My biggest concern is the number of times we'll have outside activities that interfere with having a full day, but that's a scheduling problem outside of this that I need to deal with by guarding our time as much as I can.  I am hoping I can work directly with my student during the first few weeks of the term to help get this started well so that good habits are formed early.