How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 1

When Albert Einstein said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler” he could have been talking about your initial topic for a unit study. This should be a maximum of 1 to 4 sentences or even 1 incomplete sentence. If you have a couple of paragraphs or a page worth of notes, that is not your topic; that is an outline in paragraph form. Until you are experienced in writing unit studies, you will need to be very strict with yourself about keeping the topic tight to your initial topic. Even with all my years of experience, or maybe because of it, I still keep the focus of unit studies narrow to keep them cohesive and manageable rather than chaotic.

It is important that the topic is interesting for your children. It is just as important that you are interested in the topic of the unit study. There is so much research that goes into developing a unit study, at least until you have some experience, so you will want to be excited about the topic. I also recommend starting with a topic you feel academically competent teaching. Writing your own unit study is curriculum development. If you are nervous about teaching a subject, it makes it much more difficult to develop curriculum in that subject area.

The Indigenous History of Chaco Canyon

This is a great topic. It is narrow in focus, but robust enough to build a project around. It is less than one sentence. The subject matter is of interest to me. We traveled there this year and it had a profound impact on me. However, this is not the perfect topic, as you will see.

How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 2

The next step is to make some organizational decisions. There are 3 important decisions to make before going any further.

1. How many weeks are you allotting for your unit study? I recommend your first unit study span 2 to 4 weeks. One week is usually not enough time to delve deeply into a subject. However, do not let it run more than 6 weeks. The amount of planning that is required to keep it cohesive and focused becomes more complicated with every week you add. I understand the desire to conduct a semester-long unit study. However, until you have the experience associated with understanding everything that goes into developing a couple of them, it can be challenging to be successful.
2. Will the unit study be ancillary or the primary focus of your studies? This can affect the length of time spent on the unit study. A unit study that is ancillary primarily focuses on one or two subjects. When I develop science curriculum, for example, the chapters of each unit, make up a unit that is focused on a science topic. They are designed to be ancillary to other studies. A unit study that is the primary focus encompasses all or most of a learner’s studies while you are doing it.
3. Is there enough information to make it worth spending more time planning a unit study for this topic? You will want to conduct some quick online research of this topic. Make sure there is plenty of information, and that the information is at a level your kids can understand. Occasionally, I will find a topic of interest that I consider adding into a course I am writing, only to find that the amount of knowledge needed to understand it makes it a poor topic to include.

The Indigenous “Culture” of Chaco Canyon

1. Three-week study
2. Primary focus
3. There is plenty of information

How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 3

Choose one primary discipline for the project. Be strict with yourself if you want the focus to be on multiple disciplines. Yes, you can weave in other subjects; but they must support the primary discipline. These subjects are the secondary disciplines, At this point, you may need to tweak your initial topic if necessary to make it a better fit with the discipline.

Once you have figured out the primary discipline and topic, before planning, complete some additional, quick research. If you cannot find good information that is age and stage appropriate for your learners, I recommend you rethink the focus of the topic to something with more information. For example, little to nothing is know about the culture of the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon. The information I found was mostly conjecture. Much more is known about the history of Chaco Canyon.

Main Topic: The Indigenous History of Chaco Canyon

For several reasons, I changed my topic to the History of Chaco Canyon from 850 CE to 1250 CE. The topic of culture fits neatly into history. Narrowing the time span will make the unit study more manageable and less likely to become unwieldy. This time span better reflects why I am interested in this as the topic of my unit study.

• Quick research of topic
  • 900 BCE first dated evidence
  • 200 CE first dwellings
  • Borders the Navaho Reservation

Through this research, I learned that people were living in this area at least 2,922 years ago. I had to decide if I wanted to change my date. I did not, because I wanted to focus on the period when most of the dwellings have been dated to. I also found great information about Chaco Canyon on the website of a neighboring Navaho organization, which I can use to help with planning.

Next, choose the other academic disciplines you want to weave into the unit study. For each discipline, ask yourself how it fits with the primary discipline. If you cannot answer this, consider leaving it out. Adding topics that do not easily connect will make the unit study disorganized, which should be avoided. Put a question mark next to any topic that might be difficult to find information for as you proceed (as I did in the list below). Add academic skills/activities you want students to work on. Unit studies are a great way to work on mastery of skills.

• Science
• Construction & Architecture
• Archaeology
• Linguistics?
• Writing
• Literature & Nonfiction Reading
• Geography

Before investing more time, make sure these work with your situation; for example, multiple learners at different levels or an only child.

How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 4

One reason I developed a unit study was to use as an example in this section. I do not know what area your unit study focuses on. Therefore, this section will be devoted to choices I made for the history of Chaco Canyon from 850 CE to 1250 CE.

You can see from the example that the focus of the planning goes back to the primary discipline. Every discipline can be broken down by the types of topics included in a study of the discipline. You can see from my list that I am interested in the linguistics and politics as a part of this history.  I could not find substantial information about these, so I would not include them in my unit study. When choosing topical information, keep it tightly focus on the primary discipline.

For the secondary topics, I have an example of possible sub-topics to include for each secondary discipline.  The reason for doing this before going into detail for the primary topic is, one – to decide which ones to keep and which, if any, to cut, two – to see how the pieces fit together, many of these cover the history and make that planning easier, and three – to see if there are any thematic elements I want to use as focal points.

This bullet point list will be fleshed out later in this process. The topical information that will be chosen will tightly focus on the primary discipline. For example, I do plan on quickly referencing the people who lived in this area before 850 CE and the people who lived there after 1250 CE, but it will be brief.

Other Topics Included under History

• People
• Culture
• Linguistics?
• Technology
• Politics?

Again, I wrote a question mark after all topics that might be difficult to get information about.

Learning Skills

While planning, decide if you want to intentionally include learning skills as a part of your project.

How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 5

It is a good idea to decide on a hands-on project before serious planning goes into the unit study. If one of the secondary disciplines lends itself to a fun hands-on activity, you will not want to cut it. This also helps to ensure that you have enough hands-on projects within your unit study.

There are lots of pottery shards in Chaco Canyon. Even though I am not artistic AT ALL, I would definitely include pot making in this unit study. That is what YouTube tutorials are for.

• Pigments from local soil, paired with
• Pottery making
• Building with stone
• How archaeologists build a story from their digs
• How the geography has changed over time, much of this change has come about because of weathering and erosion, so this is part geography and part geology.

How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 6

Until you have gained more experience, make cuts. Actually, the more experienced you are the more cuts you make. I have entire chapters and labs fully written that have never made it into books.

Do not let the unit study become overlong or unruly. You see an example of the first topic I deleted, linguistics. It will likely be joined by other topics as I continue to plan in more detail.

Linguistics: Is there historical evidence of the linguistic group of the residents of Chaco Canyon?

I could not find solid information about this topic.

How to Handcraft a Unit Study Step 8

You are not done yet! Now you will need to put this information into a calendar. Keep making cuts if the unit study is running long. You will also want to write down discussion questions. You can even plan when to discuss them.

If your goal is to have a cohesive unit study, you want to start with a solid plan. It is okay to tweak the plan, and fall down rabbit holes once you get going, but a plan that you can refer to, fall back on, or stick to rigidly (depending on your homeschooling style) will keep this from becoming chaotic.

As you can see I have chosen a chronological approach. When planning a unit study for a subject that does not lend itself to this approach, I recommend referring to doing some research to investigate how others structure a course of study on this topic.