Review: Transcripts Made Easy

Did you know that my son is going into grade nine? GAH! I am trying NOT to join in with frantic homeschooling parents getting bent out of shape over highschool. Trying hard but not necessarily succeeding! 🙂

Everyday Education has come to my rescue… at least in the area of transcripts and grading. Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschooler’s Guide to High-School Paperwork has been a boon to quieting my mind over this important part of record keeping.

What I am Reviewing

Transcripts Made Easy: The Homeschooler’s Guide to High-School Paperwork.
Everyday Education.
Janice Campbell
Digital ebook, PDF.

$24.95
138 pages.  4th edition. 
high school transcripts, homeschool transcripts, homeschool high school

Transcripts made easy is a comfortable read filled with a wealth of information. It comes as a PDF document easy to store on my laptop. At 138 pages I chose not to print off most of it, but I will be printing off some of the record keeping pages.

This is the fourth edition of this helpful guide for making highschool transcripts. You will find helpful tips from the following experts included: Professor Carol Reynolds, Judith Munday, and Kathy Kuhl.

The six sections of Transcripts Made Easy are:

• Meet the Transcript
• Plan with the End in Mind
• Keep Simple Records
• Grades, Credit and GPA
• Create the Transcript
• References, Resources and Reproducibles

Transcripts Made Easy Details

Janice Campbell starts off by explaining what a transcript is (a record of what a student has studied.). She walks us through the different sections of a transcript, what to put into them and why they are important. SUPER helpful.

Transcripts Made Easy is designed so that you can jump in at any point and use only the parts you need. If you pick up this ebook from upper elementary school you would start at the very beginning. If you are just finishing highschool though, you might want to just skip to how to actually fill out the transcript.

From just learning how to keep records, what to record, how to track hours and more, there are many options provided. When it comes to transcripts, regardless of where you are in the process you can still come up with a usable transcript, so fret not. Help is here.. make full use of it!

One of the Things I most appreciated was Ms. Campbell’s careful explanations as to why we need to be careful how we put our transcripts together. When explaining why grading on transcripts is important, she helped me understand the mindset of the person who would be looking at that transcript. She then proceeded to walk me through the different ways of grading material, extremely helpful to someone who has never graded her child in his work. 🙂

Section Details

As much as you can just jump into the area that you most have need of, really the whole book is helpful.

• Meet the Transcript: Talks about what a transcript is, the different areas, and what needs to be included.
• Plan with the End in Mind: How to plan out your highschool education, sample methods, how to make sure you are meeting requirements, developing study skills and more.
• Keep Simple Records: Simple is best right? Why by complicated. Keep good records to make the end product easier to manage. I only skimmed the special needs section, just know it’s there.
• Grades, Credit and GPA: How to grade, how to manage grades if you are an unschooler, different ways to mark, and a helpful writing evaluation rubric is included.
• Create the Transcript: different types of transcripts are given, along with directions on how to create them. Pros and cons are listed for each helping you make an informed decision.
• References, Resources and Reproducibles: forms you can use to make your homeschooling journey easier. Forms I intend to use are the class profile, the subject worksheets, and the line transcript.

My Thoughts

Janice Campbell writes with a personal tone. I LOVE how she disseminated her information in an easy-going, practical format. She even reminded me that if I have a question about how to do something with a document, just ask google and there will be an answer. Sometimes I forget that!

She takes what would seem to be an overwhelming task and breaks it down into simple record keeping. Some for the homeschool parent to do, and some that the student can do. I have been pleased to talk through some of her material with my son. His first question was “Is there a sheet I can fill out?” I could happily tell him “yes!” 🙂

The loads of examples provided, to show the variety of transcripts and type of record keeping amazed me. There is more than one way to do it all, it’s just a matter of finding a system that works for the parent.

An excellent resource for anyone looking at how to put a transcript together for their student.

Suggestion:

Something I would LOVE to see is .. oh, how do I put it? With PDF’s you can use the fill and sign feature. So I would love to either see separate PDF’s for each of the forms that can be filled out OR….

A link to a google docs folder with pre-made forms already to use. That was my first thought when I saw the sample diploma along with instructions on how to recreate it. It was like… OH.. if only this were a google doc so I wouldn’t have to recreate it! I could then just fill in my son’s name and the name of our school. THAT would be the best! (YES, I admit to having a lazy side!) 🙂 I don’t know which would be better. Separate PDF forms could get cumbersome, but be really useful. BUT the google docs aspect could simply be an embedded link. I don’t know. I just LOVE the idea of having ready made forms that are fully editable, and available as a separate file.

My Recommendation:

If you are homeschooling highschool, regardless of your methodology, go get this book. It’s chock full of important information to consider in regards to homeschooling. It’s more than just transcripts, it’s grading, legal requirements, options, how to grade and so much more. It is well worth your time invested.

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