Term Exams in our Charlotte Mason Homeschool

It should come as no surprise that in our Charlotte Mason homeschool, we do end of term exams. The first term we did them, I cried. My daughter had forgotten everything we had covered during the term and I wondered if homeschooling was the right choice for us. My daughter is currently in 3rd grade using year 3 of Ambleside online.

Looking back, I can see that maybe beginning the school year about 6 days after we brought home a new baby brother was the wisest choice. Alas, I looked over everything we had covered and began diving back into the areas of struggle, like narration. Narration was an obvious point of weakness in our homeschool. I took our week off between terms to read Know and Tell by Karen Glass, listen to A Delectable Education Podcast on narration, and reference Home Education by Charlotte Mason. This prepared me better for our next term and gave me a refreshed attitude towards continuing our homeschool.

Charlotte Mason said:
“The schoolboy ‘crams’ for an examination, writes down what he has thus learned, and behold, it is gone from his gaze for ever: as Ruskin puts it, ‘They cram to pass, and not to know, they dopass, and they don’t know’ ” (Vol. 1, p. 155).

In our home, exams, or Show What You Know, is a natural part of learning. Exams act as a check in for our family to find out what went well, what didn’t go well, and changes we may need to make.

I offer no review time for exams, nothing is studied in advanced, prepared for, or looked over prior to exam week.

Our questions are open ended narrations that give her the space to tell me what she remembers about particular topics.

I typically do one or two questions per subject area:
Bible (old and New Testament)
History (British, American, Biography)
Nature Studies (Invertebrates, Rocks and Minerals)
Literature (Tall Tales and Poetry)
Spanish (Nature vocabulary and commands)
Geography (Marco Polo and Practical Geography)
Map Work
Math ( Cumulative from the year)
Copywork and Grammar
Reading (reading a passage aloud)

We typically set one week aside to complete exams. The week we do them is more relaxed and I’ll build our exams into our current lessons rather than taking the entire week off. For example, instead of a math lesson on Monday, we will do our math exam. Instead of our history reading on Tuesday, we’ll do our history exam.

I’ll ask my daughter questions and she’ll narrate to me. Usually I’ll record her answers on my phone and transcribe her answers later. I save all our exam questions in a booklet for our records.

At the end of the week we both work on our reflections for the term. She tells me what went well this term and what changes she’d like to make. I do the same reflections and add in resources for the next term as well.

In term 2, my daughter didn’t connect with the history text we used very well. This was evident in her exam narrations. Since she’s had a difficult time with this book all year, her exams tell me that our history text is not a living book for her and I need to add in more connections to her history lessons.

Next term she’d like more hands on science activities and I will be adding in architecture studies.

So there you have it, exams in our Charlotte Mason Homeschool. I love how our exams let us reflect on the past term and continue to provide areas that can be improved in our home.