[Michelle]

Hello there! I used “Modernity” with my 17 & 15 yr olds last year and this year we are doing the American history. I do sit with my girls and take notes with them since I find the lectures very interesting as well. We do “pause” if we need to catch up on notes and often one of us will have caught an important note that the other needs. We also recap with each other after the lecture for just a few minutes to make sure we got the main point. (Some of the Modernity lectures are quite long) It’s a learning process and note taking skill that will continue to grow throughout the school year! So, I definitely would recommend taking notes with your students at least for the first month or so until they really get the hang of it.

Also, with Modernity, our family found some of those readings to be too lengthy or confusing for my students to grasp for certain lessons. So we would skim or I would pull out a few lines to focus on and go through the “exam” questions together. Our focus is for them to learn and digest the information, not just be able to spit out the right answer. The 4 projects they will do through the school year can be huge learning opportunities. My kids really got into these, so I definitely weighted their grades for history on the credit they earned doing these research projects as well as the portfolios they created.

Hope that helps!