One of the things that makes Tapestry great is its flexibility. However that flexibility means that every homeschool family needs to decide how to organize the assignments they choose to give their students each week.
Workbooks are a great way to organize information for your older, independent students. I begin to teach independent work in the Upper Grammar level, checking work daily, and working up to Rhetoric level, where I have a weekly meeting to go over assignments and grade their work.
There are many, many types of workbooks and everyone has to find what works for them. Also, things change year to year and we all need to be flexible and adaptable. This system I am going to describe is what I use currently; this system has changed and probably will change again. Hopefully this will give you some ideas that will help you develop the system that works for you.
I've kicked around the idea of using a bound workbook, but I prefer the flexibility of a 3-ring binder. I like to work week to week when deciding what components to assign and which not to assign. I do have the assignment sheets already written before a unit begins, but I sometimes modify them so I don't print them until giving that week's assignments.
This is the current assignment sheet I use:
Please note that I blocked out the assigned reading pages, which are copyrighted to the program.
I have also used the following assignment charts in the past:
My kids design their own binder covers.
We redo the binders every unit, removing the previous unit's work and adding in the next unit as we go.
Here is the list of what I generally give them each week to put in their binders:
- assignment sheet
- map
- timeline entries (to be cut and pasted into their books)
- history accountability and thinking questions (I create Word documents that include the following info that is copied and pasted from the TOG Workbook pages):
- General Information for All Grades
- Accountability Questions, with space to write the answers
- Thinking Questions, with space to write the answers
- any charts for that week
- literature accountability and thinking questions (again, I create a Word document that includes the following from the TOG Workbook pages):
- Literature Introduction
- vocabulary terms
- any Poetics assignments
- Accountability and Thinking Questions, with spaces to write the answers
- government questions (R students only, with space to write the answers)
- government reading (if it is on the Tapestry Government CD)
- any worksheets pertaining to their other subjects
