How do you organized TOG within Homeschool Tracker? I just downloaded the basic version and I have no clue how to categorize/subcategorize it the best way...

W@hat are the adventages of the upgraded version?
thanks

I've had the upgraded version so long, I can't remember the differences...however, it seems to me that with the free version you couldn't print the assignment sheets, grade cards out and that was a must for me. I used the basic until I knew I absolutley would use it and then bought the upgraded version. Their service and training is outstanding so I highly recommend taking advantage of that.

As to categorizing..it's taken me quite a bit of time and trials to figure out how I like to organize the subjects but here's what I'm doing so far that seems to be working. I name the plan each year based on the year plan we're using TOG Year 1, TOG Year 2, etc. This year we are on TOG Year 3. Under this plan I place the subjects: Language Arts, Math, History...the basics. Then within each of the subjects I put the courses by level. I try to think of it as you would see courses at college.
So under the subject of Language Arts, I have courses Spelling 2, Spelling 4, Literature LG, Literature UG, Literature D, Grammar, Foreign Language...all the language arts studies. Under History, I have Core LG, Core UG, Core D Indepth LG, Indepth UG, Indepth D, Maps LG, Maps UG, Maps D, Bible, Arts Lg, Arts UG, etc.
Under Math, I have the math programs I use for each child....

Ok, once I have that all set up, I go through TOG and focus on each week. When I set up my assignments for each child I use a sequence number starting with the Week number and the day number. So for Week 1, Day 1, my sequence number would be 11. For week 26, Day 1 my sequence number is 261. 263 would be week 26 day 3. It makes inputting a little tricky at first BUT when I go to print out my assignment sheets it's great because I just pull up the sequence numbers I need and never worry about missing something...AND I don't have to figure out which activity we're doing on which day...it's already been decided when I did the original input.

Now for independent reading and such...I just have the reading assignment listed each day of the week and let the kids input the page numbers they intend to read each day. For instance, my dd had to read Bound for America this past 2 weeks. I just had Bound for America listed as the assignment every day for 2 weeks. When she looks at her assignment sheet, she looks at the book and then figures out how many chapters she needs to read each day to complete it by the deadline and writes it in for each day.

Clear as mud? It's really hard to explain in writing, but if you use the online training that Homeschool Tracker offers, you can literally watch Katie click and input info to show you how to maneuver around. It helps a lot.

If I can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact me privately at jbtandem@yahoo.com

Good luck!
Diane

HI!

Now I have the version you pay for, so I don't know if this will work with the free one or not. Basically this is for a rhetoric or dialectic student. I do not bother with homeschool tracker for my 1st grader!!! I have a course entitled 19th century history for next year. I weight grades according to the activities of reading, questions/charts, mapwork, timeline, discussion and tests. Now an easy feature is to add a lesson plan. My plan is TOG history rhetoric, subject history, course 19th century world history. Then I chose and activity like say questions/charts. I then go down to the button that says copy. Then click the button that says auto increment page/lesson/lesson chapter. Another button pops up. I start with 1 and end with 36. Under leading text I put custom and put in week. Then begin copy. It is so fast. Now if you wish for the reading activity, I go back and list the books for each week, but you do not have to. It is so easy and so fast!!

I hope that helps some.

Christine

Iwona,

I used the basic version for several years and was quite happy with it. I organized my subjects, activities, resources, etc. according to what I needed to report to the school district. We live in PA and need to submit resource lists, attendance (in hours or days), subjects taught, and several other items. So I simply wanted to make it easier to generate reports at the end of the school year. We also need to have a certified evaluator "evaluate" each child every year so I also wanted to keep in mind what things the evaluator likes to look at when building my categories. For example, our evaluator likes to see the resources broken down by subject (NOT a requirement but she finds it helpful). This is a long way of saying that my goal for using HST initially was to make reporting easier, therefore, that's how I organized in input.

When using the basic version, I would enter the TOG assignments just like they appeared on the Tapestry Reading Assignments page (I didn't break anything down by day) and gave them all a due date of Monday. I did the same thing for the other subjects (math, science, grammar, spelling, etc.) Then, when I printed out the list of weekly assignments, I gave it to each student to do their scheduling. They would break down everything into daily chunks and schedule it day-by-day and enter it all on their planners. That way, I didn't take over scheduling from them but still had everything I needed for reporting.

I upgraded to the plus version last year because I liked the ability to create "lesson plans" in advance without having to assign specific dates to them. I enter my lesson plans in weekly chunks just like I did with basic so that my children must do their own day-by-day scheduling within the week. The biggest difference is that I can load it all in advance and just transfer it to the assingment grid with the Monday due date each week. With basic, once I created the weekly assignments, they all had due dates attached to them. If we changed our minds about when we were doing school, I had to change all the due dates for any assingments I had already entered. With plus, I just leave them all in lesson plan format until we are ready to do weekly planning and them bring them into the assignment section. It sounds confusing, but once you get going, it's really easy.

You really need to think through how you organize/categorize in the plus version because it influences how you end up using it. All of the above comments about sequence numbers, courses, etc. refer to the plus version. I have to admit that it took me all summer last year to figure out how to take advantage of the plus version features. For a time, I regret upgrading! Once I did figure it out, however, I found all kinds of ways to make it work for me.

Hope this long post has at least one tidbit you can use!
Monica

Hi Monica,

I would love to know more about how you break down and designate your lesson plans. I also upgraded to plus last summer, but I never really figured out the best way to use the extra features, and I know I could be doing so much more with the program.

Would you mind taking a minute to explain your coding system? Thanks so much!!

Jana

Thank you all for your advice!

quote:

Originally posted by JanaNC:
Would you mind taking a minute to explain your coding system? Thanks so much!!

Jana,

None of this is original -- I gleaned all of these ideas by searching the TOG Yahoo groups for Homeschool Tracker or HST. I started with what I knew I wanted to see on my reports and then backtracked from there. My system is similar to Diane's and Christine's systems above. I create my subjects and courses first depending on what I need to have for tracking/reporting. My main subjects are Math, Language Arts (spelling, grammar, vocabulary), History/Social Studies (history, geography, civics, government, etc.), Literature, Composition, Science, Bible/Worldview/Church History, Art & Hands On.

I then create courses within the subjects where needed. For example, within History/Social Studies, we have Geography of the Ancient World and Ancient History for year 1. For Math, I add a course for each grade level (Math 4, Math 6, Algebra, etc.). For Science, I enter the actual courses we use. You get the idea.

Then for lesson plans, I group all of the TOG subjects into one lesson plan by level. For example, one lp this year was called "TOG Yr 1 - D" and I loaded my weekly assignments for the dialectic level in History, Geography, Bible, Literature, Art/Hands On, Composition. I, too, use sequence numbers starting with each week number (week 1 assignments are 100, week 23 assignments are 2300, etc.). When I want to transfer the lp items into the assignment grid, I just select everything starting with that week number and it puts everything on Monday (or the 1st day of the week) since I want my students to do their own scheduling.

For other courses, I create lps by daily or weekly assignments, depending on the subject. For grammar and spelling, it's as simple as do 4 lessons each week, 1 per day, on whichever days the student chooses. For math, it's do 1 lesson per day for 10 days then take the test on the 11th day.

Once I had my subjects, courses, and resources loaded, it then took only a couple of hours to load all of the assignments for the entire year. I then spend about 5 minutes each week submitting lessons to the assignment grid. I print out the list of assignments (everything is "due" Friday) and each student breaks them down into daily tasks and schedules them on their planners. It is very important to me that they do this -- it would actually be easier for me to let HST break down and schedule daily tasks but that defeats our longer term goal of building time management skills.

The final step each week is mark the assignments complete and enter any grades. I use the auto attendance feature so that it records the student as present on whichever days assignments are completed. I also enter in the time spent for each assignment so HST tracks hours -- this is helpful for reporting purposes to the school district (we have the option of meeting a minimum number of hours or a minimum number of days) and for documenting high school credits for non-textbook courses.

I don't know if any of this helps. You can always email me offline if you have other questions! ourschool @ comcast . net

Blessings,
Monica

One more thing, not for TOG but for the rest of your subjects you do realize that there are yahoo groups where people have already created lessons that you can download. For example: my oldest is doing Chalkdust Geometry, Apologia Chemistry with Teaching Company tapes, my middle one is doing Apologia General Science and Chalkdust Pre-Algebra and so I just downloaded the file and loaded them and they are ready to go. So the only thing I have to create myself is Tapestry.

Christine

thanks so much Monica. I guess I know how I'll be spending my summer again this year! I appreciate your taking the time to type all that in.

Blessings,
Jana

We are a little backwards HST+ has the option to take things from the assignment dates and copy into a lesson plan. I don't usually have time to type things at all one time plus what happens if I change from LG to UG back again? So I type things in weekly and then copy to the lesson plan so it is saved for future kids. It takes me about 1 hr weekly. I just don't have 18 hours at one given time to put a whole semester in.

I love HST+ though and I really like some of the new options with V. 6. Much better than when I bought it years ago

T

I purchased HST last year and spent the summer entering all the info needed for last school year. It was more work than I really wanted (and would gladly pay a small fee to have all that work already done for me) so I contacted both HST and Tapestry to see if they had considered teaming up (in the same way TOG has with KnowlegeQuest Maps) and sell lesson plans specifically for TOG. I remember HST was all for it. Seems like TOG was considering it. I can't seem to locate my correspondance with TOG. Does anyone know if this is something they are working on? I will begin working on entering all the info for the coming school year in a few weeks and would hate to find out later someone else has done all the work for me.
Thanks for the help.

We have considered doing this an would be willing, but there are concerns and there is the problem of staffing. Right now, we need to stick to our primary mission of finishing Year 4. NEXT year, we have all kinds of hopes, and this is one of them. So, go ahead. We won't be doing this for the '09-'10 school year.

Thank you Marcia. I really appreciate you keeping this on your "drawing board." You are such a blessing!

Marcia, That is exciting to hear. I have been working for two weeks trying to figure out how to set up my homeschool tracker and have gotten it down to where I think I can now enter a week's worth of plans in about an 8 hour day. Should only take me 6 weeks to get the entire school year in. (sigh)

On another note, does anyone here know how to get HST to print a multi-day assignment on the date assigned instead of the date due? I am getting frustrated with literature readings not showing up on the Assignment Calendar until Friday of the second (or third or fourth) week.

Not to confuse anyone, but there is a simpler planner, scheduler, tracking system:

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