Standards-based lesson planning- just say no!

A friend of mine posted recently on Facebook that she was struggling with figuring out how to plan history lessons for her son because the standards were all over the place. She plans on returning him to a more traditional type setting in two years and is afraid that he'll have "holes". So she's been obsessing about what the standards say and how to check that box.

My advice? Dump the standards for lesson planning! I know, as a teacher and school administrator I should be cheering for standards. Standards serve a purpose of keeping schools and teachers on track, ensuring a fair and equal education for all students and bring up the overall level of achievement across school systems. They make it far easier in a mobile society for a kid to move from California to Virginia and then to Massachusetts, hopefully while still staying on track academically.

But as a homeschooler, standards are the last thing I look at when lesson planning, not the first. I'm a strong proponent of interest-based lesson planning. Each summer, we sit down as a family and ask "What do you want to learn this year?" We set goals based on interest with a few mom-required elements woven in as needed. I lesson plan from there, taking into account interest, age, access to materials and whether or not the interest is likely to be long lasting or fleeting.

Every month or two, I check in with the standards of the grade level we're working at in that subject. Are we on track or do I need to tweak an upcoming assignment? Is there a connection I can make in a twenty second conversation to check a box or do I need to dig up some resources and find some relevant materials to cover a topic? If I do need to do that, how can I fit it into the momentum and lessons we already have, rather than throw something random on top?

A simple example of this is the kid's ongoing love of Greek mythology. I can take a standard like this one from Common Core ELA ""CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story’s or drama’s plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution." and weave in a study of a particular character like Odysseus or Poseidon. It's a natural fit into something he already enjoys and doesn't require me to sidetrack our studies to check off a box. 

Math is also simple, as it very linear and allows you to simply keep progressing through the standards and making forward progress. However, I often see that families forget the important areas in measurement and geometry because they aren't in the same linear progression. I like to sandwich these topics around something we're already doing in science, or spend a few days before a holiday break doing hands on projects. 

As new science standards and history standards come out for our students, there will be more components to review and check. But by no means, should these standards become the base of your homeschool lesson planning! Standards-based lesson planning is the surefire way to burn yourself out and make your kids lose their love of homeschooling. Even if your intention is for your kids to return to a traditional school environment, don't lose track of why you started this adventure in the first place. No good teacher... or homeschooling parent... sat down with a list of standards and checkboxes and started coming up with worksheets to meet the needs of those checkboxes.

So to every one of my friends out there sitting down with a list of standards before you lesson plan, please- just say NO!