Homeschool Basal Periodicals

Studies Weekly publications are used as alternatives to textbooks all over the country in tens of thousands of classrooms. More than 1.2 million students in grades K-6 will use them in classrooms in the 08-09 school year. Now, in 2008, for the first time, they are being packaged in a special offer which is affordable for all home school families.

The publications have earned three recent state social studies adoptions, including Florida (2005), Arkansas (2007), and Tennessee (2007). This means that state DOEs are approving them to be used instead of textbooks.

Perpetually Updated
Basal periodicals have many advantages over basal textbooks. The format allows for yearly updates to avoid obsolescence. The publications respond to state DOE standards changes and students are updated continually with current events that relate to their curriculum in social studies and science. Students are motivated to use Studies Weekly because they like it more than a textbook.

Effective Rate of Standards Coverage — Less is more...
When a textbook covers 100 percent of required standards, but there’s only enough class time in one school year to get through a little more than half the book, the Effective Rate of Standards Coverage is about 60 percent.

The next time you consider a textbook that is alleged to cover 100 percent of your grade level's state standards, think about what the Effective Rate of Standards Coverage might be for that textbook. Does the book contain several hundred more pages than there are days in a school year? How many hours of teacher prep time will be required to "edit" that book down to a managable size? What other demands of NCLB make it difficult to take time for deciding what pages of the text to leave in and what pages to leave out of your social studies or science program?

Studies Weekly teacher-authors understand the time constraints of accommodating meaningful social studies and science in an NCLB world. Studies Weekly material is always manageable in one school year with very little teacher prep time required. The Effective Rate of Standards Coverage is usually near 100 percent. The percentage of coverage is always clearly stated and carefully documented (just a few clicks from here). The company even goes the extra mile and lists the standards that are not covered—if any—for the teacher’s planning convenience.

Studies Weekly Beginnings

The first Studies Weekly paper was published in 1984 when Paul Thompson, a fourth grade teacher in Utah, needed a lesson resource to teach his students about their state's history. At that time, state specific textbooks were not available. He reasoned, "What we need is a 'Weekly Reader' that's all about our state." Paul knew that other teachers needed state history material and believed they would support the idea. That’s how Utah Studies Weekly became the first Studies Weekly publication.

That year teachers subscribed 4,500 students to Utah Studies Weekly. Teachers said that Studies Weekly was the perfect resource for them because it helped them teach required social studies benchmarks while concurrently increasing reading skills. The success of Utah Studies Weekly inspired Paul to try his publication concept in Texas with the help of his two sisters—Beverly Johnson and Linda Petersen—both long time residents of Texas.

Studies Weekly Development
The concept of a social studies publication designed specifically to meet the history curriculum standards for each state proved successful. Only one year after the first printing of Texas Studies Weekly, publications followed for many other states. From these beginnings, Studies Weekly publications are now in print in all fifty states. Science Studies Weekly publications for K-5 have been developed as well. Today, more than seventy Studies Weekly publications are available. Circulation reaches more than 1.2 million students each week during the school year.

American Legacy Publishing, Inc.
American Legacy Publishing is one of six companies that helped develop Studies Weekly publications throughout the United States. All of the sister companies worked together and made contributions to the success of the Studies Weekly brand. Eventually, the owners of the other five companies decided to retire from their businesses and were acquired by American Legacy Publishing.

American Legacy Publishing

Company Philosophy

We believe the best years of the United States of America lay within the bright future we all share. The assurance of this future is now being built by teachers and parents in every state who are creatively striving to make a difference in the quality of their students' education. We strive with them to make a positive contribution to their work by providing learning tools that more accurately and concisely match the objectives for which they aim and the time constraints under which they labor.

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"One of the best uses of recorded history is to make us patriots, and to teach us and posterity to live more worthily and with fewer mistakes as individuals and as a nation. It is therefore the part of writers not merely to collect and speculate upon the dry bones of accomplished facts, but to remember the kind of flesh, blood, and soul that was their mainspring, and if these can be shown to be of a high order, such history will not fail to produce what it should, 'the tonic of a wholesome pride.'"

From William Corner’s, “John Crittenden Duval: The Last Survivor of the Goliad Massacre.” Southwest Historical Quarterly, Vol. 1, p. 62. July 1897.

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