University Preparedness

I can hardly believe I'm writing this post. It seems as if it was just yesterday Tyler was bouncing around, watching Barney, playing with his dump trucks (and filling my basement with dirt) and eating "Wa was with the ows cut off" (waffles with the hard outside edges cut off).

Tyler at about age 2


But .... I am.

He is finishing up his last year of high school and ready to move on with his life. He's been considering his options, a lot of things for young people to wade through. After many considerations, he's decided on a plan (loosely at this stage, but a plan nonetheless).

He took an English Language Assessment test through a university, to see if he's ready to handle this level of courses. An "Am I Ready for studies in _________". Hmmm...I must admit, I was more than a bit nervous (for a couple of reasons) while he was doing this test. This is where the 'rubber hits the road' for many homeschoolers. A time to see how effective ....or non-effective..... your homeschooling has been. Hmm...what will happen if all those naysayers over the years have been right....what then? What if we've ruined his life by homeschooling? Yes at this point I was having many moments of second guessing myself....moments quite the same as I did when we first started homeschooling.

Add into this, our English program ended at Grade 8. (For the years 9-11 we did French). He has not had any real English studies or instruction in going on four years. Oh no...more panic setting in. (Although, knowing he may very well be required to write an English exam somewhere along the line in order to enter a post- secondary institution, he did 'glance over' (in his spare time) the grade 8 English book again this past year.)

He did not study for the test (against my better judgement). He just decided that today was the day to do it and went ahead with it.

He had three hours in which to complete the test.

He finished in less than 2 hours.

Here are his scores:

Your Results
Section Your
Score
GRAMMAR: Part A 90%
GRAMMAR: Part B 80%
GRAMMAR: Part C 70%
READING: Vocabulary 90%
READING: Comprehension 80%
WRITING: Sentence Completion 80%
WRITING: Transitions 90%
WRITING: Definitions 40%
WRITING: Sequencing 100%
WRITING: Sentence Descriptors 60%

Overall Score 78%


A couple of things stand out to me here. First of all the sections on Writing: Definitions (40%)...this area was totally new to him...he had not studied this area at all.

Also the section on WRITING: Sequencing 100%. This one makes me smile. You see...when he was in Kindergarten, he apparently had great difficulties in sequencing. Almost daily, the teacher would meet me at the door to tell me of Tyler's difficulty of that day. Sequencing was just one of those problem areas. She was certain he had a learning disability and warned of his impending doom if we didn't deal with this problem at once. We didn't as we didn't see any problem. (At home, when things were quiet, I would ask Tyler about these difficulties...if he understood what was being asked, if he could hear when she was speaking etc. He always assured me he could. When I probed a little bit further....the response I would get would be something like this: "Who cares if the little boy grabbed his hat first or his bat first??? What difference does it make??? As long as he gets everything....that's all that matters.") Oh boy....Tyler...

Yes...I'm breathing a little bit easier today.

Congrats, Tyler! Good luck in your future endeavours ;)

Taken at his last birthday (we don't have too many pics of him...he is a bit camera shy ;))