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If you are a parent or teacher whoneeds quick access to the answer key,this is the file for you!However.If you are a student using thisto cheat on a quiz or exam, stop!Cheating won’t help youin the long run.

EXPLORING WORLD HISTORYGuide for ParentsandAnswer Key

Exploring World History Guide for Parents and Answer KeyISBN: 978-1-60999-073-2Notgrass Company.All rights reserved.No part of this material may be reproduced without permission from the publisher.Printed in the United States of AmericaNotgrass Company

Guide for Parents UsingExploring World HistoryExploring World History provides material for one entire school year in three subjects:world history, English, and Bible. To complete one credit in world history, one credit inEnglish, and one credit in Bible, the student must read the text in Exploring World HistoryPart 1 and Part 2 and complete the weekly and daily assignments as they are given inthose volumes.Students should complete each day’s assignments on that day. The student should expect tospend an average of 50 to 60 minutes on each subject each day. The actual time spent on eachsubject on a given day will vary, but you should allow your student about 2 1/2 to 3 hours perday to complete all three subjects.We believe that you are in charge of your child’s education and that you know best howto use this material to educate your child. We provide you with tools and instructions, but weencourage you to tailor them to fit your child’s interests and abilities and your family’s situationand philosophy. You might need to experiment with the curriculum for two or three weeks toknow how your student can use it most effectively in your situation. Being able to do this is oneof the benefits of homeschooling!Course DescriptionsYou can use the following course descriptions as you develop your school records, producea high school transcript, or report grades.World History. This course is a survey of world history from Creation to the 21st Century.The course discusses civilizations from around the world. A special emphasis is placed on keyevents, key ideas, key persons, and everyday life in various time periods of world history. Thestudent reads a significant number of original documents and speeches while studying thenarrative of lessons.English: World Literature and Composition. The student reads classic works of worldliterature including novels, short stories, devotional literature, plays, theological essays,biographies, memoirs, poetry, and hymns. Emphasis is placed on how the literature reflects thehistorical settings of the works. The student also has several writing assignments. Most of theseare based on historical issues from the various periods of world history. The writing assignmentstake several forms, including essays, editorials, speeches, and letters. (Note: You have the option ofassigning a 2,000-2,500 word research paper [see page xii in Part 1]. You also have the option of assigningother kinds of projects for each unit as alternatives to writing. You will need to decide how often yourstudent will complete a writing assignment and how often he or she will complete another project.)Bible: Issues in World History. This course provides an overview of the Bible and Biblehistory, including both its message of faith and how it complements our understanding ofhistory. The student reads several complete books of the Bible as well as several of the Psalmsand portions of other books. The student also studies such topics as Old Testament history,church history, the inspiration and authority of the Bible, and how to study a New Testamentletter. Topical Bible studies bring Biblical teachings to bear on several of the historical issuesdiscussed. (Note: The Bible study component of this curriculum is concentrated in the first half sincethat part covers Old Testament and New Testament times, but the second half has a significant amountof Bible study also.)i

Student Review PackThe Student Review Pack has a great deal of material that you might find helpful for increasingyour student’s understanding of the course and for giving you a way to know and grade yourstudent’s grasp of the content. It is an optional supplement that contains the following threecomponents.The Student Review includes review questions on each lesson and on the readings from InTheir Words; commentary on Bible readings assigned at the end of lessons; and literary analysisof the books assigned in the curriculum. (The Bible commentary and literary analysis are alsoavailable on our website through the link given on page 8.)The Quiz and Exam Book has a quiz to be taken at the end of each unit. In addition, after everyfive units, it has a history exam, an English exam, and a Bible exam. That makes a total of sixexams in each subject over the course of the year.The Answer Key contains answers for all of the review questions and for the quizzes andexams.Suggestions for GradingTo earn credit in world history, English, and Bible, the student is expected to complete theassignments listed on the second page of each unit introduction and all of the assignments listedat the end of each lesson, except for the Student Review, which is optional. A weekly assignmentchecklist is available on our website.You have several activities that you can include in arriving at a grade for each subject. Theseactivities include: memory work; unit projects (writing assignments and hands-on projects);review questions for each lesson, for the readings in In Their Words, and for the literatureselections; unit quizzes on history; and exams every five weeks on history, English, and Bible.You can give equal weight to each element, or you might choose to give different weight to eachcomponent.Depending on the chosen topic, you might choose to grade some of the weekly writingassignments as history or Bible assignments instead of as English assignments. You might chooseto grade some of the readings in In Their Words as Bible assignments when they deal with topicsthat are related to Bible study. You might also count some of the literature titles as English orBible work. For instance, you might count The Art of War and Bridge to the Sun as reading forhistory. You might count The Imitation of Christ, Here I Stand, The Hiding Place, and The Abolitionof Man as part of the Bible credit.Grades are usually assigned on a percentage basis for an individual assignment and as lettergrades for a semester on the basis of the cumulative assignment grades. We recommend givingan A if the average weighted grade is 90% or above, giving a B for 80-89%, a C for 70-79%, anda D for 60-69%.If your child consistently gets grades lower than 60%, you might need to evaluate his readinessto study a course with this level of difficulty. On the other hand, you might need to adjust yourexpectations. You might consider an additional grading element based on your perception ofyour child’s overall grasp of the material. This is another advantage of homeschooling: you canjudge how well your child understands the material and how he or she is growing from thestudy in ways that are not reflected by test and assignment scores.We designed this curriculum to cover what we believe a high school student should learnabout world history. Helping a student pass the CLEP or AP test was not our primary goal.However, this course provides a good foundation for preparing for those tests, combined withone of the test preparation books that are available.ii

Teaching WritingThe three most important activities to help students write well are reading good writing,writing as frequently as possible, and having his or her writing critiqued by an experiencedwriter or teacher.You can find many aids to help you in teaching writing. The Online Writing Lab from PurdueUniversity is an excellent source that is available on the Internet. We have found The Elements ofStyle by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White to be concise and helpful. This book is available fromNotgrass Company and many other sources.Other resources that have been recommended to us include The Elegant Essay by LeshaMyers, Format Writing by Frode Jensen, Writing Skills by Diana Hanbury King, and Teaching theEssay and Teaching the Research Paper by Robin Finley. The Institute for Excellence in Writingoffers comprehensive instructional courses, and Reconciliation Press offers writing instructionservices. These suggestions are offered as resources you can investigate. We do not endorse oneprogram over another.Grading Writing AssignmentsTeaching writing skills can sometimes feel more like an art than a science. We knowgood writing when we read it, but trying to explain why we like it is like trying toexplain why we like a particular flavor of ice cream. Good writing engages the readerand makes him or her want to keep reading. It covers the subject well and uses propermechanics (spelling, grammar, and punctuation). Good writing informs, inspires,and sometimes challenges the reader. Above all, good writing says something of significance.Because defining good writing is difficult, giving a grade to a writing assignment can besomewhat subjective. What is the difference, for example, between an A paper and a B paper?One student might write the best that he or she can, and it still might not be as good as whatanother student writes with less effort. What grade should you assign to that first student’swork? In addition, how can the grades you give reflect a student’s improvement over the courseof a year? After all, we hope that the student will be writing better at the end of the year than atthe beginning.A grade for a writing assignment usually has two elements: one is mechanics, and the otheris coverage of the subject matter. Noting errors in spelling and punctuation is relatively easy.Misused words and awkward sentences might be more difficult to detect. The most difficultpart of grading is determining whether or not the paper is organized well and covers the topicadequately.Beginning with the highest possible grade of 100, you might want to take a point off forevery misspelled word, punctuation error, or grammatical error. An awkward sentence mightcount two or three points off. A paragraph that does not flow well or have a clear purpose mightcost five to eight points. You can also consider whether the paper is well-expressed but hasmechanical errors as opposed to its being poorly expressed but mechanically good. We suggestnot giving a grade on the writing assignment until the student submits the final version of theassignment. Use the rough draft as a teaching opportunity. It is fair to have higher expectationslater in the course. Also, if a student has numerous mechanical or grammatical errors in a paper,covering the paper with red ink might do more harm than good. Instead, focus on what appearto be the three most serious or common mistakes and don’t worry about the rest at that point.When the student has corrected these problems, move on to other problems to correct in laterpapers.iii

The website of the College Board, which administers the SAT and CLEP examinations, hasan Essay Scoring Guide that its graders use. On their website, you can read this guide and alsoread sample essays and see why those essays received the scores they did. In addition, theNational Assessment of Educational Progress program of the U.S. Department of Education hasinformation available online about its writing assessment.You will probably find it helpful to have someone outside your family read one or more ofyour student’s essays and give constructive feedback at some point during the school year.Maps and TimelinesIf you want more maps besides those included in the text of Exploring World History, considermaterials offered by Geography Matters. Our website has links to some free map resourcesavailable online. See the website address at the end of this booklet.Timelines of world history are available from Geography Matters and other publishers. Youmight consider creating your own timeline in the format that works best for you, such as a chart,successive pages in a book, or a long sheet of paper that you can post on a wall.Notes About the LiteratureWe chose literature for the English component of Exploring World History that we believe isinspiring and informative and that won’t assault your student’s faith or sense of decency. Weintentionally excluded many books that did not meet our criteria.Some of the books we included have words or ideas with which you will be uncomfortable,as we are. We want to let you know about these issues in case you want to do some editing beforeyour child reads the books or in case you want to substitute another book. You might want toread a book aloud to your student and skip over inappropriate words. Our family has done thiswith several books. However you decide to use them, we believe that the overall impact of thesebooks for good outweighs an occasional use of inappropriate words. The editions indicatedbelow are the ones that are available from Notgrass Company.The Imitation of Christ (Dover)This book is a good example of devotional literature and has some excellent insights. Itreflects Catholic doctrines and practices such as the monastic life (page 13), thinking of saints asspecial people (page 14), portraying a “religious” person as a monk (pages 15-16), the idea thatcommunion involves a mysterious participation with Christ (several places in Book Four), andthe view of the priesthood as a special class in the church (pages 123-124).The Hiding Place (Bantam/Random House)The most difficult part of this book is the description of the horrible conditions thatCorrie Ten Boom and others endured at the hands of the Germans.Bridge to the Sun (Rock Creek Books)Gwen Terasaki married her husband, a Japanese diplomat in the Untied States, before WorldWar II. They were sent to Japan during the war, even