Tips on Creating a Homeschool Student Report Card

Tips on Creating a Homeschool Student Report Card
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Setting Up the Report Cards

Report cards are given out once every semester. That means you have four total report cards in one year. Since you are homeschooling you will only have one report card with the grades given in four columns, one for each quarter.

You are going to need to define your quarters before you begin homeschooling. Homeschooling should take place for a minimum of 180 days out of the year. This breaks down to ten months usually from September to June. When you divide those ten months by four equal quarters you get two and a half months for each quarter. My daughter’s report cards go as follows:

1st Quarter: September through mid-November

2nd Quarter: Mid November through the end of January

3rd Quarter: February through mid-April

4th Quarter: Mid April through the end of June

This is a good format to follow unless you begin in August and then you will have a little bit of adjusting to do.

Giving Out Grades for the Quarter

Gather together all of the grades you have compiled for your designated quarter. Put them in piles based on subjects. Do one subject at a time. Let’s use Science as our example. The first thing you need to do is get out a scrap piece of paper and a calculator. Write out your categories such as Tests, Quizzes, Daily Work, and Experiments/Projects. Before each category write the percent that the category carries. The percentages must equal 100. Tests usually weigh the heaviest and are counted as 50 percent of the grade. Next comes Quizzes which should be 20 percent along with Experiments. You only have 10 percent left for daily work.

Now go back to category one: Tests. Use your calculator to add up all the test grades and then divide that total by how many tests there were. If you added up the totals of five tests than you would divide that number by five. The answer is your test average which is your grade for the area of tests for the quarter. Place that number next to your test column. Do the same thing for the other three categories. Add up all the grades and divide by the number of quizzes, assignments, or projects you are adding. Put your average score next to the category.

Now for the one last thing you need to do to get your grade for the report card. You must multiply each grade average that you wrote down by the percent it is worth. If you average test score was 100 and you multiplied it by 50 percent then you would get a total of 50 points. Put that in the next column by the tests. If you got only a 90 test average and you multiplied that by 50 percent then you would only get 45 points. Do this for each of the categories and then add up all the points. That is your total grade for the marking period in that subject.

Continue with all of the subjects until you are finished. Add the grades to the appropriate column on the report card. Show your child their report card.