Four-Block Middle School Schedule with Intervention/Enrichment Period and Alternating Grade Level and Department Common Planning Time

During the spring of 2007 I had the pleasure of working with Joy Lea, principal of the new Faiss Middle School in the Clark County Schools (Las Vegas) in Nevada. Together we adapted what we call the “Four-Block” schedule for her school staffing and population (See chapter 4 of our book “Scheduling Strategies for Middle Schools” for a detailed discussion of this schedule). The schedule includes four 80-minute instructional blocks, a 40-minute Intervention/Enrichment period and time for lunch. Students receive an 80-minute instructional block of language arts and an 80-minute block of mathematics daily. In addition students are taught social studies and science every other day for 80 minutes and have a fourth block for elective classes and physical education. Teachers instruct three 80-minute blocks daily and the 40-minute I/E period. 80 minutes was reserved for teachers’ team and individual planning.

This schedule provides a minimum of 66 2/3 % of instructional time in core classes. If you think of the schedule as a 9-period schedule: two daily periods are allocated to LA, two to math, one to social studies, one to science, two to encore classes and one (the I/E) can be either core or enrichment. Thus all students receive a minimum of 2/3 of their time in core instruction (6 of 9 periods), and some students receive more core instruction (7 of 9) because for them the I/E period is devoted to core instruction as well.

During the 40-minute Intervention/Enrichment period (they called it “E-Time”) students were grouped based upon formative assessment data to receive instructional interventions in language arts or mathematics or to receive enrichment activities. Groupings were reconfigured every two-three weeks as newer performance data became available.

By all accounts the school was very successful; they achieved Adequate Yearly Progress in all areas but the Special Education sub-group in mathematics. See attached state report. Joy also compiled other data to share with interested parties.Faiss Report.

This year several improvements have been made to the schedule that are worth sharing with others. Last year common grade level planning time occurred for all grade levels every day. This year Joy Lea and her assistant principal, David Osterhuber, revised the planning schedule so that on “B” days teachers plan together as a grade level and on “A” days teachers plan together in cross-grade-level departments. This should provide an excellent opportunity for cross-grade level discipline-based articulation. A side benefit of this plan is the possibility of creating multi-grade level band and choir classes on the the departmental planning day. Links to the schedule and school website follow.

Faiss MS Schedule 2008-9

Faiss MS Time Schedule

Faiss MS Preparation and Collaboration Schedule

Faiss MS Website

What do you think?

Mike

School Scheduling Associates Website

Posted in Central Office, Middle School | 27 Comments »

Adding an Extended Planning Block into the Master Schedule for PLC Time

Increasingly elementary schools across the country are able to construct master schedules with common planning time for teams of teachers (usually grade levels). The purpose for providing common time is to allow teachers to meet collaboratively to discuss instruction, curriculum, student needs, and to plan enrichment and intervention groupings and activities. What administrators must remember, however, is that this time also is teachers’ individual preparation time required for lesson planning, grading etc. In strong union states it is not unusual for the contract to protect a minimum number of individual planning minutes.

Whether motivated by contract limitations or a sense of fairness, some schools have begun to build schedules that offer an occasional (quarterly, monthly or even weekly) additional planning period for PLC discussions. With the detailed planning necessary for Response to Intervention (RTI) the need for this additional group planning time has become even greater. In our book “Elementary School Scheduling: Enhancing Instruction for Student Achievement” chapter four offers several planning scenarios for the Intervention/Enrichment (I/E) period, our scheduling vehicle for providing Tier 2 and 3 RTI interventions and enrichment activities. The planning required to make I/E and RTI successful is significant.

Some schools have provided extra time for PLC planning for teacher teams through substitutes, but this is not always possible and usually cannot be provided frequently enough. In chapter 3 of our book Canady and I outline two other ways to provide this extended planning period, one of which Terri Keck (principal of Henry Clay Elementary School in Hanover County Virginia) and I built into her master schedule a couple of years ago. This summer we tweaked the master schedule a bit and I was reminded of the utility of this extended block.

Henry Clay is a K-2 school with 6 sections of kindergarten and 7 sections of both 1st and second grades. To create the encore schedule we divided each grade level in half (3 classes and 3 classes in kindergarten and 3 classes and 4 classes in grades 1 and 2). Because class size was small in grades 1 and 2 we were able to divide the fourth section in the larger “half” of both grade levels among the other three sections; thus our basic encore schedule was designed for three groupings (classes) per time block.

Because encore teachers are assigned in somewhat of an awkward fashion to the school we were unable to do a rotational schedule (see chapter 3) and were stuck with a M-F encore plan. This is illustrated on the “rotations” sheet of the file attached below. To even out what students receive in encore classes we change encore schedules for teachers slightly every six weeks. The blocks that are assigned to each grouping of teachers are highlighted in yellow on the “Master” sheet of the Excel file. Each group of teachers receives 45 minutes of planning time daily from this schedule. This schedule, however, does not provide common planning time for the entire grade level as we had divided the grade level in half for planning purposes.

So to provide common planning time once weekly for the entire grade level and to allow time to plan for the details of the Intervention/Enrichment (I/E) period we created a 30-minute “Encore 2” schedule every Tuesday; this required additional resources to cover three classes per block on that day. We chose Tuesday because the library media specialist was not utilized in the daily encore schedule on Tuesdays. The school also had a guidance counselor and a writing teacher that were utilized in this rotation. As shown to the far right on the “rotations” sheet, the three classes per grouping rotate among library, guidance, and writing, receiving a class from each teacher once every three weeks. So teachers have 75 minutes of planning every Tuesday. By strategically placing this 30-minute block (shown in flesh tone on the “master” sheet) we created a 60-minute common planning time for the entire grade level once a week. The teachers meet weekly during this time for a variety of purposes, while the remainder of their allocated planning time is preserved for individual planning purposes. This type of model plus a second option is explained in detail in chapter 3.

Henry Clay Master Schedule 2008-9

Elementary School Scheduling: Enhancing Instruction for Student Achievement

Henry Clay Elementary School Website

What do you think?

Mike

School Scheduling Associates Website

Posted in Central Office, Elementary | 2 Comments »

Planning Time for Multi-grade Level Teachers

Many schools have difficulty finding planning time for teachers of self-contained special education classes that include two or more grade levels of students. This problem also occurs when we have combination classes (i.e.) a K-1 class, usually created because there are a few more students in each grade level, but not enough to warrant two new sections, one for each grade level, thus the mixed class. Because schools generally want students to go to encore classes (specials) with their age peers, when the kindergarten students are out to PE, the 1st grade students may still be in the classroom; thus no planning time for the teacher. Often the solution is to send the whole class together with one or the other grade level.

I stumbled upon another possibility last week while working in a school that had self-contained gifted classes in grades 3-5 housed in a center attached to one of the district’s elementary schools. ( I don’t agree with the model, but then again, I don’t get to decide, either.) There were three classes: a 5th grade, a 4th grade, and a 3/4 combination.

Our solution was to match the 3rd grade recess and lunch time with the 4th grade encore time and in the next period match the 3rd grade encore time with the 4th grade recess and lunch time. Thus the teacher of the 3/4 classroom would send her 3rd grade students to lunch and recess while her fourth grade students were at encore classes (thus no students) and do the reverse in the next period. Therefore she has 90 minutes of lunch and planning time back to back and students have lunch and encore classes with their age peers. Here’s the full schedule; the parts relevant to this discussion are highlighted in blue and red.

MultiGrade Planning Schedule

What do you think?

Mike

School Scheduling Associates Website

Posted in Central Office, Elementary | 3 Comments »

Baldwin Elementary School Parallel Block Schedule

I met with Ashley Cramp (ACramp@mail.manassas.k12.va.us), principal at Baldwin Elementary School in Manassas, VA on Monday to review her schedule and prepare part of the Educational Program Specifications for the new building they are planning. Last year we designed a new schedule that really focused on literacy instruction. The basic philosophy underpinning this plan with several detailed examples can be found in chapter 6 our new book:

Elementary School Scheduling: Enhancing Instruction for Student Achievement

Students in this schedule have small group language instruction (6-12 students) daily for 45 minutes and small group (10-12) math daily for 45 minutes. Of course that is just part of the language arts and math instruction all students receive daily.

Baldwin’s impressive one-year results are detailed in Ashley’s PowerPoint: Baldwin Results June 2008

Here’s the full copy of the Baldwin schedule. It includes the encore schedules, encore rotations and the parallel block grade level schedules: Baldwin Schedule 2007-2008.

What do you think?

Mike

School Scheduling Associates Website

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Central Office, Elementary | 7 Comments »

We’re live!

SchoolSchedulingAssociates.com went live today. It’s probably not ready for prime time yet, but… Check out the sample schedules and Excel Tips. I’ll be putting more info at the social networking site soon. Working today in Richmond, VA with all elementary principals, yesterday in Manassas, VA with elementary and tomorrow in Raleigh, NC with middle schools. I’ll report back soon.

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »