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Look carefully at Credits, when planning schedules

Home → Look carefully at Credits, when planning schedules
10th Grade, 11th Grade, 12th Grade, Family News, Helping Students Thrive, Registration-Selecting Courses, Understanding School Systems, Urgent News2

If your student is considering a high-credit course, be certain they understand that more credit means many more hours.

See the BSD Course Catalog for the number of credits earned for each course. Courses that earn more than 0.5 credits per semester also require mastering more curriculum in a faster paced course with more outside of class work.
Newport offers a number of courses that earn higher credits.
A typical course offers 1.0 per year.  We design some of courses to cover significantly more content and earn higher credit.
As you are planning to add one of the above high-credit courses, please keep these things in mind to ensure your student is successful:
  • If a student takes for example Pre-Calculus, Advanced Calculus, or AP Calculus in one class period, they earn two class periods worth of credit.
  • Earning more than one credit for a class means they cover more material in the same amount of time.
  • Most students must continue to take a total of seven classes per semester while at Newport. While juniors and seniors may take six to allow for study, work, and off-site WaNIC participation.
  • Adding just one high-credit course means they effectively have eight classes in their schedule. Plus the after-school activity that students need for well-being and to build a college-application package.

Think this through:

  • These high-credit courses are college-level courses layered on a high school course load. Most college students do not take seven, let alone eight courses per semester.
  • The outside of class work also doubles for these high-credit courses.
  • These courses are not the same as a typical AP course. AP Courses challenge students to a college-level independent learning style while tailored to a high-school setting and structure of support. They do NOT reach the level of added content and rigorous learning that high-credit courses demand.
  • Students planning high-credit courses should complete their schedule with at least one lower-demand course for each high-credit course.  That will allow them the additional time and learning capacity to succeed in the high-credit course.

So adding one high-credit course adds two courses for an eight-course day. If your student takes more than one of these high-credit courses at the same time, their course load can reach a 10-course day (with the homework and study to go with it).

Use our weekly planner to look at the number of hours your student has in a 24/7 week and when they will accomplish the work for these classes along with other needs and obligations.

 

The Bellevue School District acknowledges that we learn, work, live and gather on the Indigenous Land of the Coast Salish peoples, specifically the Duwamish and Snoqualmie Tribes. We thank these caretakers of this land, who have lived and continue to live here, since time immemorial.