Organizing Education by Cursus

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

I have been mulling over how we acquire knowledge, and how we assign that knowledge to various grades/ages/stages.  

I create most of our curricula, which can be a complication of books, pre-made curriculum, documentary series, projects, etc.  As time has passed, I have found that I prefer to create a cursuss for a topic, rather than a year/semester/unit plan.  I'll include a simple version at the end of the post.  The main concept is that these cursus are very accordion-like, both in where they fall in terms of grade level, and in how long they take.  They can also be picked up for a while, then set down to be picked up later from the stopping point.  My personal cursus are very simple, generally checklists.  I would say they blend really, really well with a loop schedule, as they are not linked to any particular time frame.  

Example:  

Human Body Cursus

The Body Book (Scholastic) :  combined with Magic Schoolbus videos, Let's Read and Find Out books, Human Body Encyclopedia  

The Way We Work (Macaulay)  : combined with projects in health/nutrition/exercise

The Way Life Works (Hoagland): combined with Botany, Viruses, The Cell (all by Ellen McHenry)

TGC Understanding the Human Body: combined with Ellen McHenry's Mapping the Body with Art

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In my excel sheets, these are all broken down by chapter and aligned with the supplements, so there  might be 15-30 checkboxes in total per line of the above.  The above loosely breaks down to lower elementary, upper elementary, junior high and high school, but there is significant flexibility.  

I have something similar for physical science and chemistry, geography, history, grammar, literature...  Most of them are works in progress, as I find and use/reject materials with my oldest kids.  Many of them have an additional column of resources specifically aimed at MY education in the topic- lots of audible books for history, for example, as that is a weak area for me and I can get in a lot of hours of audiobook compared to reading time.  

 

Anyway, what I like is the element of time and grade freedom.  It really is like a river, you get in, let the river take you as far and fast as you'd like to go, then get out for a while and step into a different river.  

 

Do you do something similar?  Do you feel like this is an objectively different way of thinking about subjects?  

 

[Monica_in_Switzerland]

2 hours ago, square_25 said:

Honestly.... so far, we've been winging most things. I'm sure that'll change as DD7 gets older, but right now, we have a lot of skills and not a whole lot of content that we're working on. When content is more primary, I can imagine organizing the content more :-). Right now, we simply study whatever we feel like, as long as we're solidifying the skills we need. 

But then my content goals for elementary school are limited :-). I think there's so much that kids don't know, that general reading and general exposure to the world gives them lots and lots of facts to build on. What I really want is the 3R's to be really solid at this age, which for me, includes enjoying those things as much as possible.

 

I felt this way and taught this way for quite a while (and probably still do, if I had to make a list of what I actually teach explicitly), but reading Hirsch's The Knowledge Deficit was an eye opener for me in terms of the value of elementary content.  Having said that, what we do, and what I know you also do, is read and read and read, across all content areas.  Hirsch's book made me more deliberate is my book choices, documentaries, nature studies, and etc.  

But the idea of systematizing cursus of topics really hit me as my oldest came to middle school, and now his sister behind him.  

 

 

 

 

[Momto6inIN]

I kind of do this ... but I have it broken down more by age/grade level and then by subject. So I have a spreadsheet for primary, upper elementary, middle school, and high school. And then in each spreadsheet  I list each "body of knowledge" I want to make sure that we hit during that stage and different resources that will help me do it.

I kind of like your way, though. I wonder if re-organizing my thoughts that way would make things more clear ...

[Little Green Leaves]

I do this, roughly, although in a notebook rather than a spreadsheet. I don't really instruct my kids much -- instead I have topics which I want to study, and lists of books / resources to go with those topics. I tend to update and revise the list pretty often though.

Some of the books get used during our formal school hours; others are for random read-alouds. I use a mix of levels. I love the idea of purposefully finding books for myself too -- I'm going to start doing that!

[drjuliadc]

I love this idea.  I am super excited about your post.  I had to look up the word cursus. I really appreciate your example.  Without an example I rarely get what people are talking about. I never hear anyone else say this though. Maybe I have a brain glitch.

I also want all of your other examples.  I know this is too much to ask but it is nice to be wanted isn’t it?

My oldest is my “content kid.” He is 9 now but has always been that way. My 7 year old is my “skills kid.”  It takes a bit of effort to teach each of them the opposite.

The content kid though, I just stuff it in and he just remembers it, even when he was tiny. I never really had the option of waiting ‘til skills were solid with him. Although I suppose I did hit reading very hard, very early with all 4 kids. As hard as 5 minutes twice a day can be. (I was very consistent and efficient with my 5 minutes twice per day).

Now I also want to read the Hirsch book you mentioned. I don’t remember hearing of it before.

[Clemsondana]

I never organized it like that, and with only 2 kids who are very different I quickly gave up on the idea of reusing plans for content, unfortunately.  But, back when I had my first kid and left academic science research, I struggled with needing something for my brain to churn on.  I made it a point to get one good nonfiction book every time I went to the library.  Hirsh's book was one of those books and it completely influenced how I taught my kids.  We used his 'What your X grader' series to guide our topics for all or most of elementary school.  My approach was to do, more or less, a month each of geography, world history, physical science, US history, life science and arts (music and art history), each year.  Some units were only 3 weeks, while others were 6, but that was the general plan.  We've also been to a bunch of museums, aquariums, zoos, historic sites, and the more that the kids knew the more they enjoyed what we saw.  

I never thought to write it out by topic, but, following the Hirsh sequence that's kind of what ends up happening.  I had my flow of subjects and certain recurring resources that we'd use sections of every year. We would look at the topic, say, life cycle of plants, or ancient Greece - and raid our bookshelves for anything that we had, I'd bookmark SOTW or Usborne encylopedia sections, and then get other books from the library as needed.  This worked fantastically with my older kid  - every day after the basics, just pick a book to look at.  I didn't require much output - maybe a sentence, or a tri-folded page comparing 3 things, or, for history, there were army men battle reenactments.  Younger didn't like the reading, but sometimes liked to make drawings or models, so kiddo had to engage enough to do that.

I will say that, unexpectedly, I think the most important thing that we've done is to learn geography.  I made it through school without ever needing to know it, but it was in the Hirsh K book so we started looking at continents and landforms, and have added countries over the years, and wow!  It has caused so much history to not only make sense, but to be more intuitive.  Once you can visualize where places are, you understand more of why things happened the way that they did - what resources, or space, or cultural clash, caused people to act the way that they did?  

Hmm...I'm intrigued - it's almost like you take the content that Hirsh would include and separate it by subject, where he breaks it down with, say, 2 body systems and 3 countries each year.  He says that it's somewhat arbitrary what they assign to each grade, and while we used it as a starting point we were never bound by his plans, so listing it topically could be a better fit for some families.  

[lulalu]

I have a spreadsheet that I am always working on. I have started from the end goal in many areas (chores, spiritual, educational). I began first looking at the end of elementary what do I find important to cover and skills to have. Then I branched out to the end of middle and then the end of highschool. I have put in subject areas that I feel need to be studied and then split them up between years. This way I don't feel like everything must be learned and mastered now. Then when books or resources fit with that I list them down. This also helps me know what I have already looked at and want to use. 

[Momto6inIN]

46 minutes ago, lulalu said:

I have started from the end goal in many areas 

I started hs'ing when my oldest was in 8th grade, so I began my hs'ing journey thinking about what I wanted his "end goal" to be - what a complete education would look like. It was soooooo helpful to start with the end in mind!