Course Challenge for Core & Options Courses

Families who desire to home educate their children do not have to give up on home education once their child reaches grade 10. Home education students who want to earn high school course credits and/or the high school diploma from the Alberta Education system have several choices, described below.

Quick Notes:
-This opportunity for course challenges is available to only our home education students who are home educating with us.
-Students will write a challenge exam for the core courses, and they will provide a portfolio of learning samples for elective/options/CTS courses.
-We offer challenge exams for all of the core courses; we use portfolio review for Science 24.
-A student may challenge the CALM20 course through the portfolio assessment option, and we offer a unique learning and assignment resource that the student will use and complete to meet the requirement of the portfolio assessment option. Contact us at exams@thee.ca for more information.
-A parent or student needs to contact THEE at the exams@thee.ca email address to ask us if we can support the elective/options/CTS courses that the student wants to challenge because we can’t provide portfolio assessment for all of the literal 100’s of CTS modules and some of the options courses. The, “Guide to Education”, policy document from Alberta Education requires that, “…a certified teacher who has expertise in the subject/course [emphasis ours]…”, provide the evaluation/assessment of the learning sample(s) that a student has provided for the course challenge, and to act honestly and with integrity, we cannot provide the required assessment for all of the 100’s of CTS modules and dozens of options courses.
-Students have the opportunity to earn and then use an,”External Credential”, to earn course/module credits for such subjects as computer networking, word processing, spreadsheets, website development, music and international languages.

Challenge Exam

To prepare for the challenge exam, you need to first know what you need to study and learn. You can find out the course content on which the exam 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) or by emailing us here at THEE at, exams@thee.ca.

You may find helpful learning resources, which are based on the Alberta Education course/curriculum, which we have identified for you and made available from our webpage, “Aligned Learning Resources”.

Once you’ve completed your study of the course content and are ready to write the challenge exam, please consider the exam preparation opportunity that you have via the web site of ExamBank.ca. THEE has an account at Exam Bank, so contact us at exams@thee.ca to ask for the login information that will give you access to the practice exams.

Preparing for the Challenge Exam
Two resources that are helpful but that are exam preparation resources and are not teaching/learning/assignments/answer-keys resources are
• The Key … series of exam preparation resources (http://castlerockresearch.com/the-key-study-guide)
• ExamBank.ca … a website for which THEE (and most schools in Alberta) has a subscription-based account (https://alberta.exambank.com). You will need to contact us at the office by email (exams@thee.ca) or by phone (780-467-5511) to receive the user name and password for THEE’s account at Exam Bank.

Scheduling the Challenge Exam
When you are ready to write the exam, your parent will need to send an email message to exams@thee.ca to tell us that you are ready to write a challenge exam. Your parent will need to include in that email message the following information: (1) name of the student and (2) exact name of the course to be challenged (e.g. English 10-1 or Math 20-3). Someone at THEE will reply to your parent to begin the process of scheduling the exam.

Portfolio Assessment

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) or by emailing us here at THEE at, exams@thee.ca.

Once you have identified the options/elective course that you want to challenge, send an email message to exams@thee.ca to tell us at THEE the exact name of the course(s) that you want to challenge by way of the portfolio assessment. We will then communicate with your parent regarding the contents of your portfolio that you will need to include.