Thursday, February 14, 2013

Are your classes 45 minutes? 60? 70? 90?  Mine are 45 minutes and I find that I often end my classes wishing that I had just a few more minutes to bring it all together.  But with that said I can see how 90 minutes could be a behavioral and lesson planning nightmare?  My question that I want to ask the class is how would you schedule your day if you could choose the system?  Longer or shorter periods?  Block scheduling versus traditional schedules? 

An interesting perspective is from Atlas Prep in Colorado Springs, it is a free charter school and it has 60 minute periods not 45, not 90.  And the best part is that once a week every teacher has the day off!  Meaning that they have to come to school but they just sit their take coach class if schedules, prepare lessons for the next week, track, and (GASP) look at data?  http://www.atlasprep.org/

There are many strategies out there to schedule the schedule.  I am wondering what does everyone else think is the optimal schedule for maximum academic achievement. 

Nick
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2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello Nick,

I enjoyed your written response and ideas you shared with us in regards to the logistics of running a school. What is interesting about this topic is I don’t feel there really is a concrete way to research which time allotment of class would benefit children the most because there are always other variable that could have impacted student interest or the data generated by classes. Because of this, I can only go by my opinion and judgment.

I have worked, student taught, or was educated in 12 different schools, all with different schedules. When I went to school, my classes were all 40-50 minutes. Even as a student who was urgently ready to leave class, I still did not think that was enough time to hook the students, go over homework, do a review, teach, and close the lesson. I would agree with you that 40 minutes is too short. My current schedule is 90 minutes, and as a middle school teacher, engaging 38 students in one room for that length of time can be quite the challenge. However, I do love how I have time to break up my class into many sections and topics including a longer do now, quality homework check, long hook, practice, assessment, and small group. I am sometimes able to cover a dozen skills in a variety of ways in just on class. However, as I have said, engaging students for that long is quite the challenge and requires quality planning with a hook or way to engage very important. Finally, some of the most successful schools I have been a part of were in Vermont and upstate New York, and every class is 60 minutes. Social Studies, Math, Science, and Reading are all 60 minutes and every teacher teaches four sections of the same subject. Although if you do the math, three 90 minute classes or four 60 minute classes add up to the same amount of instructional time, the walk in the hall, the social break between classes, or just the change in scenery provided a reset and I witnessed more involvement and engagement in lessons.

In conclusion, I am a supporter of 60 minute classes both as a teacher and student.

Justin Garritt

February 18, 2013 at 10:35 AM
JD said...

Along with you and Justin, I too believe that 60 minute classes are ideal. I currently teach at a school where students have 60 minutes for all classes except Math and English. These two courses (seen as priorities because of standardized testing) are the only 90 minute classes, and I am a Math teacher. As you might imagine, it is difficult to plan for this much class-time and to keep students engaged for that long (especially right after lunch or if a particular student is having an off-day).

Last year I taught at a different school where all classes were 60 minutes (Monday through Thursday), and that was an ideal amount of time to go over homework from the previous night, do an introduction to new material, allow for group-work followed by independent practice, and close with a short daily quiz. Additionally, it was an appropriate length for my testing days. In my opinion, 90 minutes is much too long for a test, and I do not like planning other activities before or after exams because I feel like that only burns my students out.

You might be wondering why I said my previous school was 60 minutes only Monday through Thursday. We did NOT have an individual planning day (which sounds like a wonderful concept); instead, we had Friday half-days for students followed by weekly staff development. Unfortunately, the Friday schedule our administrators agreed on meant our classes were condensed to 25 minutes. Needless to say, Fridays were far too short to do anything meaningful—really to do anything period.

Like you, I do not know too much about research specific to ideal class-times; however, based on my experience with classes far less or far more than 60 minutes, I believe an hour is the best amount of time for secondary courses.

February 21, 2013 at 6:53 AM

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