Important First Step: Once you have identified the options/elective course that you want to challenge, send an email message to [email protected] to tell us at THEE the exact name of the course(s) and/or modules that you want to challenge by way of the portfolio assessment, and we will respond to you by sending to you a very helpful and detailed set of instructions that will get the ball rolling for your son or daughter to be able to successfully create the needed portfolio of learning samples.

NOTE: We cannot guarantee that we can support a course challenge for every course that is in the Program of Studies, so you need to follow this first step and contact us at [email protected] to begin this process.

All of the following information is predicated on you contacting us at [email protected] BEFORE you have begun your plans to challenge an elective/options course or module.

To prepare for the portfolio assessment, you need to first know what you need to study and learn. You can find out the course content on which the portfolio assessment will be based by reading the official, “Course Description”, from Alberta Education, which you can find at the Alberta Education website (https://www.alberta.ca/programs-of-study.aspx). You will use the, “Course Description”, document as your roadmap to find all of the content and “outcomes” that your son or daughter will need to learn in order to be prepared to successfully challenge the course.  During this learning process, your homeschooling son or daughter will need to select samples of his or her “evidences of learning”, such as completed assignments, completed projects, video-recorded demonstrations, etc., which your son or daughter will include in his or her portfolio that you’ll send to us via [email protected].

IMPORTANT:
1. One opportunity to write challenge the course

Your son or daughter may challenge a course or module only once. This policy is from Alberta Education and not from THEE (see page 128 in the, Guide to Education). For this reason, you will be able to submit the portfolio once.  At the risk of sounding cold or harsh, I need to say that we in the office will not engage in a back-n-forth of email messages or phone calls with the parent to tell the parent (or student) what is missing or how to organize the learning samples in the portfolio. Remember, a course challenge means that the student believes that he or she has already learned the content/outcomes of the given course and wants to demonstrate that accomplishment. Being ready to challenge a course means that the student previously prepared to study the content of the course, has then completed that study and learning of the content, and is ready to send to us his or her “evidences of learning” in a well-organized portfolio.

2. Custom and required lesson/assignment workbooks for CALM20, Religious Studies, Art, Music, and PE.
Contact [email protected] for more details.