Monarch teacher dashboardAs most of you already know, we have been using the online curriculum Monarch, by Alpha Omega Publications, for our teens' homeschool curriculum for almost four years now. Independent online learning works really well for our family.
We have tried various other online programs for an occasional subject, and really appreciate the way Monarch works. The gears behind Monarch are well oiled.
Unassigning a projectFebruary is a good month to evaluate what has been accomplished in the school year, and a time to make adjustments, as needed. So we have done this year, also.
We had a four day school week most of the fall semester, as we attended a homeschool co-op at our church. This was a wonderful experience, but it did put us behind on Monarch work. We have spent December, January and February catching up.
Monarch is set up with a calendar for the student to follow, showing what school work to do that day. They don't have to do it that way, they can ignore the calendar and work on what they want to work on, when they want it. As my students like to do.
The calendar is a great tool for the teacher as well, allowing you to take days off, extend the school year, make adjustments as needed, then reschedule all remaining lessons for the rest of the school year. You can do this as many times as you need to. I use the rescheduling lessons and calendar as a way to see how much work we still have.
As I sat to take a look at our school work last week, I was happy to see we weren't as behind as I had thought. In fact, Missy in Finland has been ferociously going through her 9th grade work, and will likely finish ahead of schedule.
Yet, there is still a ton of work to do. I went through the various assignments Monarch has for the five, six subjects each of my students have. There were a few I thought we didn't need to do, and some review we likely won't get to. Monarch has an easy way to unassign a lesson or project so the work not done won't count against their grade.
When I had gone through each students' each subject, unassigning projects, and rescheduling their remaining lessons, the last item to do was checking their grades. I do check over everyone's work at the end of the school day (a very quick process thanks to Monarch's automated grading), so I shouldn't find any surprises in their grades. But nevertheless, I generated report cards (another simple process with Monarch), and with renewed vigor we are ready to keep trucking on our school year.
Making today a Non-School Day
As I have been writing this, today turned out to be an unexpected PE day for my boys. They are skiing with our guests, so as I hit publish with this post I will go to Monarch's calendar to take the day off. Love the flexibility of Monarch!
For these last two days of February Alpha Omega Publications has a sale going on. Check out the details here how to get up to 15% off of your purchase.
PS. Monarch is Mac/Windows compatible, but does not work on the iPad. For the sake of getting images for this blog post I brought up the teacher version of Monarch and took screenshots with my iPad.
Alpha Omega Publications is a sponsor of Our Mothership Adventures. We have been given free curriculum in exchange of our honest reviews. You can read our disclosure here.
My daughter is in 9th grade, and we just began homeschooling this year. We've quickly learned that there is so much she wasn't taught in public school. So she is having to catch up by taking grades lower in Math and Language Arts, even though she had a 3.8% in the last grade completed in public school (8th).
ReplyDeleteI do not know if it is the previous lack of teaching at the school, that we're new at homeschooling, or that Monarch is a MAJOR adjustment, and very rigorous.....but we're 3 days in, and she's had meltdown a few times already.
Does Monarch seem to be on target with what is required by the states you are familiar with? And does the curriculum sufficiently prepare them for the state required standardized tests at the end of the year? I would be grateful for advice (be.engme@yahoo.com). Thanks!