Main Lesson Books – Hoary Relic or Modern Tool?

For some it is a familiar and reliable tradition, for others it is a hoary relic that needs to be thrown out or at least remade. To arrive at a well-founded judgement here, it is less about feelings and memories and more about taking into account the different perspectives that play a role in the choice of writing materials and means of documentation.

In the first few years, great importance is attached to an attractive design for the exercise book. This gives the children the opportunity to develop their formal skills and aesthetic awareness. They learn to write on unlined pages, create illustrations for stories, label drawings, learn to design both the texts themselves and the layout of the pages. What starts out as something simple culminates, for example, in the design and editing of the year project in year twelve. In the portfolio work, value is also placed in the higher classes on the graphic and colour design of the folder, corresponding to the subject matter it contains. The lower and middle school teachers in this way also make an important contribution to the work with digital media and presentation tools in the higher classes.

In addition to developing an aesthetic awareness, the pupils can gradually develop their documentation skills through the work with the main lesson books. With guidance and help, the children learn, initially rather more unconsciously, to capture the essentials, to present things clearly and to supplement texts with pictorial elements. In doing so, individual learning steps are recorded and the individual learning process is documented on the one hand, and a kind of collection of materials or small textbook is created on the other, that hopefully does not disappear into oblivion at the end of the main lesson but is retrieved in the next main lesson in this subject and used for follow-up and repetition. The advantage of this type of textbook is that it reflects the path taken by the class and therefore does not get in the way of exploratory, phenomenological work with ready-made results. By formulating age-appropriate criteria that the exercise book should fulfil, children and young people can also develop and test their powers of judgement.

The invitation to formulate and design things independently also avoids the temptation to reproduce old main lesson books year after year. There are certainly realities that are still true even after ten or 20 years – such as narratives in zoology or the laws of cloud formation. But when parents find that the texts and drawings in their children's exercise books, for example about a visit to the blacksmith or the bakery, are the same as those they once wrote in their own main lesson books, then the question arises as to how self-created such an exercise book really is.

Main lesson books can only invite and support pupils' own thinking and independent work if, on the one hand, we offer them role models and instructions, but then also give them enough space to formulate what they have experienced, observed or read themselves, to supplement texts with their own drawings, to think about a meaningful structure and also to create the table of contents independently. This enables the young people to gain independence in writing, thinking, structuring and designing, to develop confidence in their ability to formulate and finally to find their own forms.

In cases where main lesson books or folders are an essential part of the work in lessons, they are also an important factor in the feedback culture, raise questions about how to deal with corrections, and serve as proof of performance. The teacher needs to be clearly aware of this, and not just in upper school: is the main lesson book a workbook in which corrections and revisions are made, or is it a final result that has been created with hard work and then needs to be treated with respect and appreciated accordingly? Have I clearly formulated the criteria for the assessment in advance and made them accessible to the pupils? Do I collect the exercise books halfway through and give the young people feedback on what they have done well and what they could improve? How do I deal with different artistic abilities? Am I prepared to accept different starting points and, above all, to recognise effort? These are all aspects that should be carefully considered and ideally also discussed among colleagues and then communicated to pupils and, if necessary, parents.

In our view, there is a need for greater awareness of sustainability in the use of exercise books these days. On the one hand, there is the question of paper, and on the other, the question of utilisation of pages and exercise books. We experience time and again that pupils start a new page for each topic or each day, for example – regardless of how much space is left on the previous page. Here we should rethink our own ideals of beauty and then develop an appreciative and resource-conscious approach to exercise books and paper with the children and young people. Full pages and exercise books not only save paper and therefore money, but are also an important step on the way to a respectful and appreciative approach to the world and other people.