The Home Education Plan (HEP) is basically a report card for students, written by parents (and the student themself) that summarizes the curriculum outcomes for that given term (for example, Grade 11 term one English Language Arts involves reading, writing, and responding to critical and analytical fiction pieces). Home Education Plans are written for every Grade and are mandatory for all homeschooled students.
This HEP must be completed at the beginning of each school year (summarizing what the student will learn), and at the end of each school year, (summarizing what the student learned and how well they did). Please note, that the Home Education Plan and the Parent Summary are NOT the same thing. A parent summary is a more detailed summarization of the student's strengths and weaknesses in each subject, whereas the Home Education Plan requires you to give a course outline and student learning outcomes for the term. (Don't worry, I will provide all of the resources for curriculum's at the end of this article).
Attached here, is an example template for one of my Home Education Plans, you can use this document as a reference when you write your own HEP.
When my family and I began my homeschooling journey, we were given a blank HEP and Parent Summary, and zero instruction on what to do. We had no idea what to write, where to look for course outlines, so we slowly worked together to come up with a "professional sounding" document that summarized all of the concepts from my textbooks. What you must realize is that HEP's and Parent Summary's, are integral to your child's education. Teachers use this as a guide to student's academic performance, and universities look at these documents when considering post-secondary applicants. You have to do this document justice!
This means you have to write down all of the textbooks, workbooks, novel study's, websites, video resources, and worksheets that the student used during that entire term. It's actually not that difficult to write, and you can simply write down the name of the textbook, its ISBN, the name of the chapters or units completed (for example, student completed the Perspectives On Ideology © 2008 McGraw-Hill Ryerson Textbook and reviewed the concepts of The Origin and Growth Of Liberalism.) At the end of you comments, you list the average grade of the student, and their GPA. Here is how to calculate average grade, and here is how to calculate GPA.
When you open your blank Home Education Plan (which I have attached here) you will fill in the student's name, grade, DOB, and there is also a space of a Student ID number (this may be an ASN (Alberta Student Number) number, or an EPSB number that the school supplies, so please DO NOT fill this out, that is the school's responsibility). If you have more than one student per household registered for homeschooling, you must do separate HEP's and Parent Summaries for each child.
After this, you will be given a chart of learning outcomes (shown in the display picture of this post). You must type the letter X in the boxes where you feel the student will address these outcomes, for example: one of the options is "Understand the physical world, ecology and diversity of life" for this option, I would put an X in the Science box. Make sure if your student is participating in other courses like Art, Music, CALM, or Second Language Studies, that you replace the word "Other" with the name of their extra curricular at the top of the learning outcomes chart.
Once you've finished filling out these curricular outcomes, you are brought to a section called Learning Plan. This is where you write about the curricular outcomes, textbook names and ISBN's, and resources for learning. This is where you can reference my example HEP template for some inspiration. Take it one subject at a time, and most importantly, get the student themself interacting with this process; some students may even choose to write the Home Education Plan and Parent Summary by themselves (but please kids, show it to your parents before you submit it!)
Once you complete your Home Education Plan, I recommend you download and/or print a copy of this document to keep for your personal records. Then, you can "Turn In" your document to your school. Either they will have a "Turn In" button listed on the top right of the document, or you will have to manually upload it in Google Classroom, which I explain in the Navigating Schoolzone & Google Classroom Article.
Good luck parents and students, you can do it! For instructions on filling out a Parent Summary, please see click here.
Resources For Curriculum outcomes from Alberta Education can be found here. (Just make sure you select the correct grade and subject using the green buttons and icons).
Course outlines from Alberta Education for trades and other work-experience can be found here.
You may also choose to just Google "Course outlines for (insert subject name and grade) in Alberta (or other residing province)."