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Short lessons
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Hi,
I haven’t been on here in a while, but I had a conversation with a friend the other day and knew this would be a good place to get an answer to a question she has. She was asking me if there is any research to prove that short lessons work and help kids to retain information better? I wondered if anyone knows of any? Obviously I have Charlotte Mason books, but I think she wants something other than Charlotte’s work. Her child is in PS right now and is really having troubling concentrating in hour long lessons, but I think she is scared to make the jump into HS.
Does anyone know of anything other than Charlotte that shows short lessons work? I’ve been using CM for so long know that I can’t even remember the information I read prior to following the CM method!
Thanks,
Lyn
Well, I don’t have the reference – but I know that S. Suzuki found the same thing in regards to music instruction (and probably in other areas he did work in….) I know there is an instance when he was working with a student trying to work on vibrato on violin (very quickly changing the pitch of a note to add depth to the sound.) He had the student (for a baseline) do a single note vibrato for just as long as (s?)he could… say it was 30 seconds… the student was to stop as soon as he found his attention to it getting lost. Then he had the student for a couple of weeks practice the vibrato for a SHORTER period of time with full attention. I think it was about 1/3rd the time – so with my example it was 10 seconds. After that time, the student again did the vibrato for him as long as he could keep the attention – and it was a LOT longer… about a minute. [sorry I don’t remember the exact numbers]
Also in regards to music practice (for a beginner) … he said something like 2 minutes 10 times a day with joy is better than a 30 minutes. [again, I don’t remember the exact numbers….] [note that those numbers were definitely for a beginner, as he advocated a lot of practice a day overall!)
In a different area, I know that Sidney Ledso (“Teach your child to read in 10 minutes a day” advocates always stopping a lesson before the child wants to… so that they WANT to do the next lesson. If you wait until their interest is lost, they don’t look forward to the next one.
I don’t have any studies… but just wanted to say that the same concept is out there by other educators. I’m sure there are others!
From personal experience I know that the short lessons I had in my CM school in the UK from age 5-11 were excellent and I did very well retaining information – when I got to the secondary school at 12 which was not CM, it was hard to sit and digest the 50 minute lessons – so I personally think short lessons work very well in the years through junior high – after that well even during junior high, the lessons become longer through necessity – but in those early years I only see benefits.
Well, I can give you personal case studies. When I moved my oldest son from a more classical approach, where we often worked on a single topic for up to an hour, to a CM approach implementing better quality books, short lessons and narration, my son’s retention improved dramatically. He was 7 at the time. I am not sure how much of a percentage belongs to which difference, but the difference was profound.
Also, because I had a “book gulping” habit, but yet a tendency to forget about the books I read, I did an “experiment” on myself. I chose two similar books, “gulped” one, and read one spread out slowly, allowing myself only twenty minutes a day to read it. I remembered much, much more of the second book. I was, however, nowhere near childhood when I did this. But I was sold.
I don’t have a study on hand but read in various articles/books that the average attention span of an adult is about 15-20 minutes, with younger children only 1 minute per age. Guess that would make a great case for short lessons;).
I did a quick search and found this article about it concerning the length of college lectures http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/9601/article1.htm
I remember being told in high school that one remembers best what one studies in the first ten minutes and the last ten minutes of a study session, so we were encouraged by that teacher not to spend more than twenty minutes studying at a time with a minimum of twenty minutes between. We were also encourged to do something pysical or creative during those breaks. Sounds pretty CM to me.
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