Like many of you, we used a Charlotte Mason, Classical education and in the Elementary years which meant that we learned together and there was very few textbooks to be found. There were a plethora of living books, hands on activities and many, many read alouds. It was great.
Then Connor hit middle school. It felt to both Connor and I that the books became three time the size and so much more intimidating. It wasn’t as intimidating as it looked, but I did need to do some training in learning from a textbook. I also needed to train him to be an independent learner and how to manage his time and resources. This is otherwise known as Executive Function and is a really important life long skill.
I heartily recommend that kids do Apologia’s General Science in one year during 7th grade to teach these necessary Executive Function skills more than even the content of General Science. They need the time pressure to finish a harder subject in a year and they need to learn how to learn from a textbook long before it becomes necessary to put it on a transcript. I also recommend that parents never just give the book to the student and tell them “good luck, hope it goes well”, because it won’t. I think parents must go through the first 2-3 modules making sure to teach them the skills necessary to have it be successful.
The other day, I came across this thread on the Well Trained Mind Forum and it has the best description of how to teach Executive Function that I have ever seen. It’s so good, that I don’t think I have anything to add. Explicitly Teaching Executive Function