Educating Locally. Learning Communally. Living Freely.

Bits and Pieces

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Monday, June 24, 2013

Pinterest
A few items sent to us last week which may be of interest...

Join other home schoolers for a Martial Arts class.  This is a 2 hour class for ages 7 and up.  The class is $10 for first child, $5 for each additional child in a family.  Sign up at www.familytouch.org under the Public Calendar.



 The Greenville Shakespeare Company, a non-profit theatre organization in the Greenville area is doing Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors in Performance Hall on the Bob Jones University campus on July 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 15, 20, 22 at 7:30pm.  They are a family-friendly production and would love to have your family join them for a memorable evening of Shakespeare! Group rates are available for groups of ten or more.  If your group would like to participate in a meet-and-greet with the director, Jeffrey Stegall and cast members contact Kim Stegall at kim@thestegalls.com and let her know they had purchased the tickets online and were interested in a group meet and greet.
To purchase the tickets please visit www.summershakespeare.org and email at cwate963@students.bju.edu to schedule the meet-and-greet as well as to reserve your seats! 
 
 
 
The Home School Resource Center still has openings for its Summer Seminars.  Learn to use a graphing calculator, get help writing a short story or novel or get some hands-on experience in the Chemistry lab.  Lunch is provided after the morning seminar.  For a whole list of courses and an application visit: hsresourcecenter.com.

GPA’s and the Class Ranking – The Why and The How

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Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Pinterest

The Palmetto Fellows Scholarship submission for June is in the mail!


Here at the PHEA office we spend a lot of time thinking about, preparing for, calculating and re-calculating the semi-annual class ranking.  It would be fair to say that working on transcripts and GPA calculations is a big part of what we do.  The June Palmetto Fellows submission went in the mail last week, and we are busy printing and mailing the Senior transcripts.  So, what is the big to do over GPA’s and Class Rankings?  Read on to find out!

The state of South Carolina offers scholarships for students who attend an in-state college and meet certain academic criteria.  I’m not going to go into all that here, as we have it pretty well set out on our website.  Suffice it to say that in order to establish who meets those criteria, schools, or in our case, homeschool associations are the ones who compile and submit the information for eligible students.  The top scholarship, the Palmetto Fellows, is awarded in part based on a student’s standing in his high school class ranking.   Anyone who fits the other criteria and is in the top six percent of the class rank qualifies and will be nominated during their senior year.  But we can also nominate anyone with high enough test scores no matter where they fall in the class ranking.  And we can do this for any sophomore or junior who qualifies as well.  This means that with high enough test scores, your student could qualify before senior year.  The submission for the scholarship takes place twice: in December of the senior year for any senior who qualified as a sophomore or junior, and in June for any senior who qualified during senior year.

So to determine who qualifies, we collect all the grades of our high schoolers and calculate the GPAs (more on that in a minute), and rank them from highest to lowest.  We do this for each class.  Then we assess test scores to see who might qualify.  Next we contact the families with a qualifying student and have them fill out the necessary paperwork, sign the transcripts and fill out our part of the paperwork.  Finally Martha drives the submission packet to the post office and with a huge sigh of relief sends it on its merry way.

Sounds easy, right?  So why do we spend so much time on this?  Well, the time consuming part is calculating GPAs for each of our high school students.

A GPA or grade point average is calculated by converting each numeric grade into a number between 5.875 and 0.  These numbers are higher or lower based on the difficulty of the course.  For example a 96 on a college prep level course will be converted to a 4.375, while the same score as an honors level course or a dual credit course will be converted to a 4.875 and 4.375 respectively.  We then weight each class by how many credits are earned.  So a 96 college prep course that is half a credit becomes a 2.1875.  Then we add all the weighted scores up and divide by the total number of courses to get the GPA.  Lost yet?  We take care of the complicated part, but for some handy guidelines on what to submit to us click here.

We used to do all these calculations by hand – twice to catch any mistakes.  Then we would type all the information into the transcript sheet.  Now we have a handy Excel spreadsheet which does the calculations for us and produces a nice transcript at the same time.  We still have people checking each transcript for errors, but it is a lot less time consuming.  However we are now doing the class ranking for three classes (sophomores, juniors, and seniors) so the time we saved with the new program is filled up with the extra transcripts.

One thing that is important for you, the parent to consider is this.  We normally have 20-25 students who have the GPA and test scores to qualify if they are in the top 6% of the class.  The top 6% of the class is usually only 6-7 students.  Obviously this makes for a fairly large group of disappointed students.  If the students have the higher test scores, they can qualify whether they are in the top 6% or not.  We consider it very important for the parents to give their student experience at taking standardized test so that they will be able to perform well on the qualifying test.

So there you have it – our process for calculating GPAs and the Class Ranking in a nutshell – believe me our files fit in nothing so small.  I’m sure this brief overview has left some of you with questions, so please submit them in the comments section and in a week or so I will post a Q&A on the blog.

Summer Seminars with the Home School Resource Center

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Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Come Learn with Us This Summer!
 
One Week Seminars:
·         Creative Writing with authors Jennifer Freitag and Abigail Hartman. Learn about creating good plots and realistic characters.  Explore rough draft writing and editing techniques.  For 7th through 10th grades.  Cost $40.00
·         Note Taking with Chuck Hartman.  Learn to take notes and study effectively. For rising 8th graders through college freshman.  Cost $55.00
·         Crime Lab Chemistry with Chuck Hartman.  Use chemistry to solve crimes!  For 5th through 8th graders.  Cost: $45.00
·         Calculators with Mark Freitag.  Get the most out of your graphing calculator.  For rising 8th graders and above.  Cost $45.00
·         Basic Drawing Workshop with Tim Freitag.  Learn the basics of pencil drawing.  For 5th through 9th graders.  Cost: $50.00

Two Week Seminars:

·         Chemistry Seminar and Laboratory with Chuck Hartman and Abraham Raghib.  Learn chemistry basics with hands-on experience in the lab.  For 7th through 10th graders.  Cost $80.00

·         Physical Science and Electronics Workshop with Mark Freitag.  Learn about circuitry and create a working radio. For 8th through 10th graders. Cost $75.00

·         Ballistics and Propulsion with Mark Freitag.  Build and launch a model rockets. For 5th through 7th graders. Cost $75.00
 
 
Discounts available for additional students from the same family taking the same seminar.


Find out more information and sign up at hsresourcecenter.webs.com or call

864-354-9934

 
 
The Home School Resource Center is located at 115 Buist Avenue in Greenville.

Piano and Accordion Lessons

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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Pinterest
Experienced enthusiastic teacher has vacancies for beginner to advanced students! Fun Pieces, Awards, Recitals! Competition Preparation! I Love Teaching Young Children! Adults Welcome! Free Assessment! Free First Lesson! Lessons In Studio West Pelzer or In Your Home!


Music is a wonderful skill for any child and learning piano or accordion can help a child in so many ways: improved reasoning capacity and problem solving skills, improved maths and language performance, better memory, greater social and team skills.

Any time is a good time to start, but the earlier the better. Children’s brains and motor skills have usually developed sufficiently from age of three to six to begin to consider learning to play an instrument such as piano or accordion. Children’s ears are more fully developed and they are learning to master language and abstract concepts.

Playing piano or accordion improves concentration and self-expression. Young children who have piano lessons make rapid development in speech and learn to read with greater ease. Children learn to get on better with each other, enjoy school more and are less stressed indicating they are better able to handle performance pressure. Learning and playing piano or accordion builds or modifies neural pathways related to spatial reasoning tasks, which are crucial for higher brain functions such as complex maths, chess and science.

The early childhood music program Kinder Beat is contemporary and vibrant. Kinder Beat utilities ground-breaking early childhood education principles. It features many activities that children of the 21st century need for brain development and acceleration. The level of creativity and essential musical foundations can be seen on every page and heard on every soundtrack. Music learning with the fun factor embedded. Kinder Beat is suitable for children from the age of 2 1/2 till 6 year olds. Music learning with the fun factor embedded singing, movement and dance, rhythm beat and meter, percussion.

Please call Mrs Rossi Kennedy 864- 735 5179, or email: rossidjango@gmail.com

Welcome to summer!

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Monday, June 3, 2013

Pinterest
Congratulations to all our 2013 graduates! 

And to all our parents, whether you have completed thirteen years or one year of homeschooling - Well Done! 


Here at the PHEA office we are gearing up for a busy summer.  Martha and I will be spending the next two weeks entering and checking information for the 2013 class ranking and Palmetto Fellows Scholarship submission.
We are now processing applications for the 2013-2014 school year, so gather all your paperwork and beat the July rush!
As a reminder, you can contact us by phone or email if you have any questions.  A copy of this year's application is also available on our website. 

We wish you all a fun, relaxing summer!
 

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