Master schedules
Although block scheduling is frequently equated with flexible scheduling, there are many different options within the concept of flexible scheduling. The main advantage of flexible scheduling is that it allows teachers to give students more options for moving to and from interventions, electives, and enrichment opportunities as needed. The flexible schedules also allow students more time for learning,1 as well as regular time for PLCs to plan lessons and common assessments, to analyze data, and to plan learning activities that will engage all students.
The original Taking Center Stage likened master scheduling to designing a mosaic. The pieces include grade-level teams, intervention classes, room for students to move when they master an intervention, electives, clubs, assemblies, and teacher team meetings. Pages 150 to 152 of Taking Center Stage included the following suggestions about creating a master schedule:
- Allocate time differentially to allow for setup and take down of equipment for instructional purposes (science laboratories, exploratory programs, school-to-career, shops, instrumental and vocal music classes, visual arts programs, physical education, and computer laboratories).
- Provide teachers with a planning period consistent with contract provisions.
- Assign adjunct teachers such as resource teachers, physical education teachers, and part-time elective specialists to a team to encourage professional collaboration and cross-curricular connections.
- Allow time for advisory programs or guidance activities.
- Provide opportunities for school-based and community-based service-learning experiences, students’ access to health care providers, human services agencies, and other health support services.
- Reduce passing time between classes.
- Replace passing bells with chimes with soft music.
- Consider later start times to give students an extra hour or so of sleep. Reduce roll-taking, announcements, and similarly disruptive activities.
In the Spotlight
Sam Brannan Middle School, Sacramento City Unified School District
In 2004, staff members changed to a “3-2-1 (red, yellow, green)” color-coded schedule that placed all intensive intervention classes into the same block period. This schedule allows teachers and administrators to move students into grade-level courses when they mastered the concepts. In six months (including intersession and summer school), API scores went from 705 to 750.
Teachers can blend green and yellow intervention levels into one period if students are no more than one year apart in ability. Collaboration keeps all the seventh-grade teachers on the same pacing guide. They focus on the same standard so that if 10 percent of their students need interventions, all of those students meet with two of the teachers (20 each) and keep on the pace but with intensive focus so students can move back to the regular class when they reach proficiency. Teachers at Brannan learned that if they make science and social studies one semester each, a student who “graduates” up to grade level has a viable course to choose mid-semester.
Previous
Implications of School Schedules for Teacher Contracts
Next
Six-period days
Footnote
1Getting Smarter, Becoming Fairer—A Progressive Education Agenda for a Stronger Nation (PDF; Outside Source). Prepared by Renewing Our Schools, Securing Our Future; A National Task Force on Public Education; A Joint Initiative of the Center for American Progress and the Institute for America’s Future. Washington, D.C., August 2005, 15-28.