4Real Forums: Defining Main Lesson and Unit Study

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Topic: Defining Main Lesson and Unit Study

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Erin
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Posted: Oct 11 2007 at 3:56pm \| IP Logged

kjohnson wrote:

Unit studies tend to take a topic and span it across the entire curriculum, extracting bits from various subjects. A main lesson does not do this, but instead concentrates on one "main lesson." It has been my experience that a broad unit study tends to dilute subject matter. If you're trying to pull history, science, math, literature, art geography, etc... out of a single time period or a single book the subjects quickly become diluted. "Jack of all trades, master of none." The main lesson concentrates on only one of those subjects and probes deeply for a given period of time. For instance, when you're studying science, you're not concerning yourself with pulling out history. You'll get to history later. And when your attention switches gears to history, what you learned in science has a chance to sink in. When I was a student at the University of Dallas I often took "May-term" courses. These were 3 week courses offered between the spring and summer sessions. I learned more in those courses than in any others that I took because I was focused on one topic and was able to devote all of my learning time and attention to it. This is what the main lesson attempts to achieve.

I was really intrigued to read this, Katherine's description gives me a clearer name for what we have been doing for years.

I have always said when asked "oh we do unit studies but we don't incorporate all the subjects together in fact we just focus on one at a time, it's just intense"

What do we do? Well I have looked at the key learning areas ie. science, nature, history (both Australian and world)geography and religion and then we pick one 'subject' to focus on for an indepth study for usually about 3 weeks plus. This way we cover much over the year but it enables us to concentrate more intensely. For example we may do a three week block on American Indians, then we do a study on Australian mammals.

Wow, I don't know why I am sitting here feeling so happy to have a 'name' for what we do, but I am.

Maybe I have always felt like a unit study failure

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Kathryn UK
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Posted: Oct 11 2007 at 4:28pm \| IP Logged

kjohnson wrote:

When I was a student at the University of Dallas I often took "May-term" courses. These were 3 week courses offered between the spring and summer sessions. I learned more in those courses than in any others that I took because I was focused on one topic and was able to devote all of my learning time and attention to it. This is what the main lesson attempts to achieve.

Ooh! An aha moment!

University degrees here traditionally focus on only one subject ... you study history, or biology, or French, or whatever, but that subject alone. My degree was in history and I studied at a college that used a tutorial system. I took only one course over a 10 week term, and within that course focused on a single topic each week. So for example, one week might be spent on the Norman Conquest, the next on Magna Carta, delving into detailed reading and preparing an essay. Gradually the topics and the individual courses built on each other until the whole thing came together. Kind of Main Lessons writ large?

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