Organizing a School for Supervised Study
The organization of a school to provide opportunity for supervised study is thus described by the principal of one of the first schools to undertake this type of work on a large scale:
We took five minutes from each of the six recitation periods, which we have in our school day, and put these together to make a thirty-minute study period coming once a day. In order that each class might receive the benefit of this period, we arranged that the first period class use the time on Tuesday; the second period class on Wednesday; and the third period class on Friday; the following week that the fourth, fifth, and sixth period classes use the period for supervised study. On Monday and Thursday the teacher uses this study period by having come to her room for individual attention, such students as she thinks may need individual help. So much for the plan.
In regard to the results, we have found that the plan is of greatest advantage with the younger students, and in the first part of a subject. That is, the younger students need direction in method of study, and all the students find it helpful when learning the method of attack upon a new subject.
We find it necessary, of course, to keep some definite check upon the work of the students. This is done by setting for them certain concrete problems in their study. For instance, to work out a certain number of examples; to be ready to prove a given theorem; to pick out the topic sentences in a given paragraph; to determine the most important points of a certain topic in physics; to pick out the leading events in a given historical topic, etc. We find the method works very well in mathematics, science, and history. Some difficulty has been experienced in the study of an English classic, such as Macbeth, in making the work of the study period definite. We are working at this problem.
Besides teaching methods of study, we have found one decided advantage of this study period is that by reason of it, the teacher gets a considerable insight into the methods of study of the various students and can discover those who waste time, who have faulty methods of attack, etc.
Another point which we have found as a result of this work is that the teachers themselves are not at all clear as to definite methods of study.[79]