Teachers talk about block scheduling in middle school

An e-mail discussion about

BLOCK SCHEDULING

(by middle school teachers on the Middle-L listserve)

ALSO: See the links at the top of this page

QUESTION: Are there any middle schools who have successfully implemented a block schedule? While common at the high school level, we've not found any at the middle school in our area. We have several middle schools in the greater Los Angeles area that are considering block scheduling but would like to talk to some schools before they take the plunge.

What are the pitfalls? Is it workable for some subject areas and not others? How do students this age respond to the extra time in a class?

Can you give some help?

How We Piloted a Flexible Block Schedule --
It's Hard to "Wing It" for 80 Minutes!

My 7th grade team piloted a flexible block schedule this year. We see the kids 3 times/week for about 80 minutes. We went into it with some trepidation, but it's turned out to be a grand success. The teachers love it, the parent survey showed great support for the idea, and our student survey showed about 90% of the students favored the longer class periods.

We had to do careful planning (it's hard to "wing it" for 80 minutes) and build in alternative plans when whole school activities were occurring, e.g., pep rallies, assemblies, etc. I think the thing that made it most successful was that all the teachers on my team use cooperative learning, lots of hands-on projects, choices based on what we know about multiple intelligences, and have that intuition to know when to switch gears in a class.

I found I was able to "cover" more content, since much of that time spent changing classes, doing start-up procedures, reminding everyone what we were doing yesterday, etc. was now devoted to learning time.

We all are assigning just as much homework as we ever did, but the kids' perception is that there is less homework, because they don't have homework every night in every class. They also told us it's easier to concentrate if you don't have every class every day. And then there were a few who said it was nice not to have to see every teacher every day. (I'm sure they didn't mean me!)

Parents liked the idea of more time spent on learning and praised the opportunity for their kids to learn time management. Kids (well, most of them) learned quickly that if they had a "light night" they could work on something due a couple of days later and even out their work load.

The objections raised by kids who did not like this schedule were that sometimes they got bored in a longer class (math was most often mentioned -whew, glad it wasn't Humanities, my area!)

Just a quick description: my team has 4 core teachers and a learning resource teacher for our 18 special education students. Our team is heterogeneously grouped, as are all the teams at our school. The breakdown of who teaches what looks like this: Mrs. F teaches one advanced math and 4 science classes. Mrs. S teaches 3 regular math classes and 2 Language Arts. Mrs. H teaches 1 Language Arts and 4 Social Studies. Mrs. Sp (that's me) teaches 1 Language Arts and 4 Humanities classes. We have about 115 kids in our house.

Our entire school will have the opportunity next year to do this kind of schedule. Several teams have already "picked our brains" and started a few trial runs this year. We tried to work out a schedule so that our encore classes (computers, PE, art, etc.) could also have the longer periods, but have been unsuccessful in coming up with a plan that we could all live with. We'll keep trying, though!

Hope this helps.

Jean Spanko
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6316/Jeanhomepage.html

It's Worked Great for a Number of Years

Our school in Oakland, Maine has a block schedule. It has worked great for a number of years. We can rotate class order, make some classes longer on days to do science labs and shorter on others when just giving a test to end a unit. It also allows for final event days for our interdisciplinary units.

However, this year we went to cross team math classes for homogenous classes. This locked all three teams to a set time and really limited what we could do.

Visit our school's web site at www. messalonskee.sad47.k12.me.us (Linda Haskell)

More Time, Fewer Preps

I have been using a block schedule for several years in my middle school team. English and social studies are blocked so that we have the same students back to back. We have four classes on our team. The social teacher and I really like this method. We see our kids for about 80 minutes every other day. It is good because we can use a good block of time to develop a major lesson or have several different activities during a period. We can also combine our two classes for a two-hour block, if we wanted to show a movie for example. We have a simple schedule with doubled periods Monday-Thursday and single periods on Fridays. We vary the length of the class periods if there is something special going on and if we lose a period due to an assembly, etc. we can even split up the remaining period by having a mini 19-minute class with each group.

Some advantages are fewer preps per day. You gain a lot of time which is usually taken up with the kids getting out their materials etc. The students benefit from having more time on task and seem to really like the longer periods. This year the practice was starting to be adopted by a couple of ninth grade teachers and some other teams in our building. Hope this helps.

A Listserve about Block Scheduling

There is a listserv that, for the most part, deals exclusively with issues (pro and con) of block scheduling. To subscribe:

The command in the body of the message should be: subscribe BlockList Jane Doe

Send this message to LISTSERV@TC.UMN.EDU

Good luck! :-)

Here's Our Rotating Block Schedule . . .

Someone wrote me with this message:
.
>I find the thought of partial block schedule interesting. We are talking about blocks for the >future. How do you work a partial block?

Here's our block schedule for our intermediate school in Lancaster, CA:

On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays we follow our regular schedule of seven 48-minute periods (that includes lunch, 5th period). We also have a 10-minute homeroom. On Wednesdays and Thursdays we run our blocks. Periods 3,4, and 6 meet on Wednesdays for 1 hour and 40 minutes each. Thursdays have periods 1,2, and 7 for the 1 hour, 40 minutes. Both days still have 5th period lunch for 48 minutes.

In addition to the time schedule we rotate the periods. So, our schedule looks like this:

Mon Tues WedThu Fri
HR HR HR HR HR
1 2 3 7 6
2 3 7
3 4 4 1 1
4 6 2
L U N C H
6 7 6 2 3
7 1 4

Every two weeks we rotate the order of just the blocks. So, after two weeks the order on Wed, would be 6,2,1 and Thursday would be 7,3,4

We do the rotation for LOTS of reasons. Daily rotation eliminates always having the same class after lunch when everyone is tired. It also spreads out the tardies for the chronic late-comers. There's a different class immediately before lunch every day, and a different one after lunch every day. With the blocks we found the rotation necessary for the same reasons. The after-lunch classes were always tired and not as well behaved and it was always the same group of kids. This way a different group "gets" to be tired every two weeks. The other thing is that we are year-round in a desert community. For the afternoon blocks who had P.E. then the heat was unbelievable in the summer months. This rotated the discomfort nicely.

>Are the bell schedules different for each day?

Bell schedules are the same on Mon., Tues., and Fri. Bells match on Wed. and Thurs.

>How do the teachers & staff find the usability of blocking time?

The one problem we are having is that the blocks are too long. From everything we have heard a 90-minute block is best. However, in order to do that we would have to develop an advisory program, which I would LOVE! However, our older and more "contract" minded teachers are refusing to even consider the possibility, so we have super-long blocks.

I really love blocks and I even teach math (usually the subject regarded as the one subject that shouldn't be blocked). I have the time to do all the hands-on activities I have always wanted to do, conduct the experiments and surveys I want to, delve into how the ancients came up with all the rules for math that they did, etc.

>Does everyone work together?

We try very hard to work together. However, there will always be individuals. My feeling is that a lot of the benefits of the blocks are being lost because of the teachers who won't take that leap into the unfamiliar world of interdisciplinary teaming and thematic units. We simply have an old staff who refuses to try and a new staff who doesn't quite know what to try or how to deal with the old staff. Things may change the longer we do this though.

Flexibility's the Key to Quality Block Scheduling

In middle school, the term "block scheduling" refers to "flexible block scheduling," where each teaching team is given a block of time to cover the core areas of math, science, social studies, and language arts. The team teachers plan together on how best to use that block of time. On a typical day, the block is divided into fourths (on a four-teacher team, that is), and each teacher takes one-four of the students for each of four class periods. However, the time can be divided in other ways, depending on the needs of the team on any given day.

For instance, there were weeks when our team would do double periods. In our case, this was often done to accommodate longer science labs. Each of us might see half the students on Monday and the other half of the students on Tuesday for double periods, with the rest of the week divided up into the "normal" schedule.

There were other occasions when we divvied up the time differently. For instance, if there was an all-school assembly in the morning, we'd take whatever time was left to us and divide that into fourths so that each of us could see all of our students for an equal number of minutes in the day. Or we might have a team assembly or program, where, likewise, we would divide the rest of our team time into fourths and meet with all the students during the day.

The strength of such scheduling is that we could decide for ourselves what we needed to do on any given day. The team down the hall might very well divide their time differently, according to the needs of their own students. This is in sharp contrast to the form of block scheduling in which everyone in the school has to follow the same schedule of double periods every other day.

Block Scheduling Invites Depth, Not Breadth?

I teach 8th grade math and I love the block days! It gives me time to use all the activities that bring the skills into the real world. The kids are up and out of their seats doing surveys, measuring various objects, working on projects, etc. It takes extra time and extra thought to plan things that are relevant to the current chapter we are on in the text, but it is a blast! My students have a better grasp of the skills and retain them longer because they actually used them in the block activities.

A word of caution though, we are not getting the breadth of coverage. It is the standard argument, do you want "depth" or "breadth". After the experiences I have had this year, I will go with in-depth understanding of fewer things over exposure to a lot but understanding little!

The Japanese Emphasize Understanding

Thought I'd mention a workshop I went to presented by Ed Smith. director of curriculum, Reynolds School District, Troutdale, Oregon. Ed talked about the need to reform school curriculum and school structure to include three knowledge bases: Brain research that "determines how students learn well", Systems thinking that " prepares students for the workplace and allows educators to create a coherent structure for learning" and Futurism, "which directs students to a meaningful future and makes it possible to align schools with an uncertain future world."

Ed mentioned the differences in how the Japanese vs. Americans teach math. The example was for 8th grade math. American schools teach twice as many concepts as Japanese and yet Japanese students score 100 points higher on mathematics performance tests than American eighth graders. Teaching less can mean learning more.

"The emphasis on understanding is evident in the steps typical of Japanese 8th grade mathematics lessons: Teacher poses a complex thought provoking problem. Students struggle with the problem. Various students present ideas or solutions to the class. Class discusses the various solution methods. The teacher summarizes the class' conclusions. Students practice similar problems.

In contrast, the emphasis on skill acquisition is evident in the steps common to most U.S. and German math lessons: Teacher instructs students in a concept or skill. Teacher solves example problems with class. Students practice on their own while the teacher assists individual students." Interesting.

More Details about the "Japanese Method"

Here is another perspective of Japanese math classrooms:

The lessons are of a "problem solving" nature but they are usually not so-called "real world" problems, they are mathematics problems in a verbal setting with a definite right answer implied. Students are actively involved in solution approaches and formulation with alternative solution ideas discussed extensively. These are not, however, student directed situations. The classrooms are very teacher directed. The instructor has studied the problem extensively and is aware of the various approaches that will be offered. An important part of the lesson is discussing these various solutions, including their strengths and weaknesses. These are not independent projects that are expected to be accompanied by a lengthy student essay on the various strategies failed and ultimately successful as is common in reform movement pedagogy in the US today. The instructor knows and the instructor weighs the various strategies offered and all students are expected to know the optimal ones and why to reject inferior ones.

Along the way, some of this instructor direction is done in a lecture mode although it would not be fair to characterize the setting as primarily lecture. The current reform movement cliche, to be "a guide on the side" instead of "a sage on the stage", is simply not an apt description of instruction in Japanese classrooms. The instructor is clearly the "sage" whether guiding or lecturing. During the student solution stage, instructors are well aware of the approaches being chosen and offer helpful advice and critical comments. Overall, Japanese instructors do more traditional lecturing than is common in US precollegiate classrooms.

[Taken from the "Home of The Mathematically Correct" page]

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*** The block conversation warmed up again in the summer of 1998: ***

"I had less than one minute left per child"

I remember teaching without a blocked schedule. I felt as if my classroom was
an assembly line. By the time I took roll, handled any other day to day
business, and either gave directions or taught a directed lesson, I had less
than one minute left per child.

Teachers at my school have a three period core consisting of three forty-five
minute periods. The subjects included in the core are English, social
studies, and reading. This allow us to be flexible in the amount of time we
use for each subject and makes it much easier to integrate across curriculum
areas.

I have also taught math in a blocked schedule where I had two forty-five
minute periods blocked and saw each of my classes every other day for four
days a week and all of my classes on Fridays.

The best advice I can give is that you will need to use a variety of
techniques to be successful with a larger block of time. You will have to
think about what you are teaching in a whole new way. Your lessons will have
to provide larger chunks of information. Social studies/history is a natural
for blocking. Simulations and group presentations fit better into a blocked
schedule than into a single period a day.

It is wonderful to be freed from the frustration of not being able to complete
projects before materials have to be put away. No longer will you have to
lose so much time in the day to day business of getting class started. The
benefits far outweigh the need for more planning time. You will know your
students better than you ever have before. The connection you make with kids
simply because you know them better helps to meet the need adolescents have
for an advisor type relationship.

When you plan your lessons you will be able to use projects that did not fit
into the restrictions you are accustomed to. Students will be able to
complete more of their work in class when they have you, the expert to assist
them.

One thing that you will need to be careful about is covering your curriculum.
When I only saw my kids every other day in math, it meant that I needed to
cover close to two times as much material on blocked days. But sometimes it
feels like kids cannot possible absorb that much information in one day. I
found that I covered less, but what I did cover was dealt with in much more
depth than was possible before. I truly believe that students retained much
more of what they had learned because of it.

I hope that some of this helps and doesn't just appear to be late night
rambling.

Three-Phase Lesson Plan for 90-Minute Blocks

I work with a number of middle schools on utilizing the block. The most
successful teachers I know like to use a three-phase lesson plan for teaching
90 minute periods. The first 25-35 minutes is used for direct instruction.
This is teaching pretty much the way you would do it during part of a 45-50
minute period.

The second phase is 30-45 minutes is used for a relatively in-depth "hands-on"
activity based upon the previous instruction. In science this could be a lab;
in math small teams may work with sets of data or develop alternatives or a
preferred approach to solving a problem; in social studies it could involve
creating a map or working on a survey; in language arts it could be one of any
number of steps in the writing-editing-portoflio process; etc.

The final step, 15-20 minutes, is used by the teacher to help students
connect the taught part of the lesson with the application portion. The time
involves questioning, reflection, and reteaching/reconstructing content.

Of course there are other times teachers may want an entire 90 minutes period
for a complete lab, a guest presentation, or a film. The good thing (and at
times the bad thing) about the three step lesson is that it moves teachers
away from the temptation of trying to cover twice as much material in every
block period. It requires them to identify and select the critical topics
meriting a full block, and secondary topics, of which several might be covered
in a single block period without in-depth application.

I hope this helps.

Jim Burns

Most of our teachers adapted

I'm a teacher who made to transition this year from 50 minute to 100 minute periods. It was an easy transition for me (a sixth grade math and science teacher at an 800 student middle school) because I already incorporated quite a bit of variety, but some more traditional (lecture) teachers really struggled the first half of the year. They complained that students were unable to focus for 100 minutes. Most of them adapted and were pleased with the change by the end of the year.

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More information about Block Scheduling here on MiddleWeb