High School Subject Scheduling

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Scheduling High School Classes

The word, schedule, gets used for several different purposes at this site. In this article the term, schedule, refers to outlining the order of your students subjects in one school day. When you set out to add structure to your high school student's day, what you are doing is setting up a framework that your student should learn how to work within.

Arranging the Classes

When you consider how to arrange your homeschooled student's high school classes, you might weigh several factors and I will cover some of them below.

If you are not new to homeschooling, then arrange the subjects in the order that you believe is best based on past experience.

If you are new to homeschooling, then my suggestion is to place the core subjects first to get them out of the way. Core subjects are the required courses such as math, English, social studies, and science. I normally slotted math first because it was the least favored subject among my children. The most favored or gladly studied subject was usually placed last in the day so that the student could spend more time on the subject.

Slotting Time for Each High School Class

As homeschoolers either know or will soon find out, setting time limits for classes can be hit and miss because not all lessons take the same amount of time every day.

Deciding: Flexible, Not, Varies

Another hurdle in class time restrictions is enforcing them and dealing with the reality of how long a class might actually take.

A Couple of Examples to Know

1. If your student routinely takes more time with a subject than you have slotted --
   1. Will you stop his work when class time is up and start on the next subject?
   2. Or will you allow him to continue working?
   3. Will you alter the schedule to reflect the average time?
2. The flip side of that is if your student finishes a class early.
   1. Will you allow him to choose what to do with his free class time.
   2. Will you require him to work on any current homework?
   3. Will you require him to move to the next subject early?

These are situations that will happen. You should consider ahead of time how flexible you are willing to be.

Some Example Schedule Types

Standard Hourly Schedule

If you plan a typical time for each class, then each class would have a one hour slot. It would go something like this:

8:00 Algebra
9:00 History
10:00 Science
11:00 English
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Elective
2:00 Elective

We know that this might not work well in most homeschool high school settings. We also know that this is how classes are slotted in learning institutions, but in the institutional setting, the class times are actually a meeting time with the instructor. The instructor teaches, then the students work and ideally, the instructor is available to answer the students' questions.

There are homeschoolers who manged to use the standard hourly schedule with few problems. The student who doesn't finish work during class time will have home work. I am not in this group of homeschoolers and I will elaborate in the second or third edit of this page.