If you’ve ever wondered if small schedule changes can add up to a significant impact on student learning, consider the following proposed changes to our 38 minute instructional periods.
Currently our students enter our building at 7:23, yet we don’t start first period until 7:50. Next year, we propose to begin homeroom in first period at 7:35, with just five extra minutes tacked on to first period. We will only take three minutes to pass between classes instead of four minutes. We will conclude our last period at 2:07 instead of at 2:04. We will go from six 20 minute lunches with six twenty minute (useless) study halls to four 30 minute lunches. We will utilize all current staff without any increase to FTE’s.
What do we gain? Our eight instructional periods increase from 38 to 42 minutes. Four minutes, doesn’t sound like that much does it?
Four minutes per period. It equals 32 minutes of additional instruction per day. 720 minutes of additional instructional time per period/38 minute periods we have currently = 18.9 additional periods of current instruction per class
OR more simply put: 32 minutes per day; 96 hours per year; 18.9 days of instruction added.
With four more minutes per period. Within the teachers’ contractual day, without additional expense. Gains all the way. Students even gain a longer lunch period. And this building isn’t so big, our kids are just conditioned (or have conditioned us) to take four minutes to get there.
Thanks to a great planning team for working out the details, we’re making some progress. Now it’s up to our cracker jack instructional team to put those four minutes per period to good use. And I haven’t even mentioned the potential blocking for Science and English teachers every other day. . .
I’m not sure how long a class period should be for optimal learning, but I am sure that no matter what the number, it’s all up to the teacher. It has to do with good planning and varied instructional strategies. It’s about maximizing the time on task with kids, not wasting any minutes.
And to my superintendent friend, Neil, I did just what you would want any principal to do. We worked it out within the confines of the contractual teacher day of 7:15-2:15. We could improve on the instructional time within that day–but the secret was putting instruction first in our brainstorming. Counselors were asked to brainstorm without thinking about cross over teachers, lunch or breakfast programs, BOCES dismissal times–just maximize instruction. Framing the decision making correctly made all the difference. Like everything else, it meant questioning, “well, WHY is it like that–why can’t we change it? instead of it’s always been that way.”
Now lengthening the contractual day, at a budget impact of about 1 million bucks for every additional hour in the day–I’ll leave that to my superintendent friends!
OK. so how did you arrange this with the contractual agreement. What a great achievement. Every minute does count and I’m excited for you. How do the teachers feel? As always Kim, you pave the way!!
Kim,
at what point do periods become too long? My school is small and new(ish) and we’ve gone through some experimentation: 62 minutes, then 47, now 55 (our classes now meet 4 days/week), which suits us fine.
In any event, 38 is very short, and 42 is better. Figure that some time costs are fixed: taking attendance, checking homework, reviewing homework (come look at my new post on that topic), settling down time (I know, I know, we all start at the bell, right?), getting itchy because the bell is about to ring (doesn’t happen, does it?) – there are probably 6 – 10 minutes that are already spoken for. Which makes your lesson time go from 28 to 32 minutes, almost a 15% increase. That’s big.
This is amazing. How many times have I felt like I had to rush to wrap up my lesson; said, “Well, I guess we will pick this up tomorrow.”; or had to cut questions a little short so that I could cover my material. 4 minutes… sounds small, but boy what I could do with that time.
For a teacher that teaches every minute of every class, and has to make every second count, 4 minutes means a lot. And this change will be greatly appreciated.
Kim:
Excellent post! I agree wholeheartedly. I did this same calculation years ago when I taught high school computer classes. All my kids had disks, books, and other items that they picked up on the way in and put away at the end of the class period. Originally, I allowed five minutes at the end of the class to clean up. I analyzed we could consistently do that in three minutes. Reducing this time by two minutes per day gave us another two full class periods per semester under our four period day system. Two class periods is significant! I think we need to do a greater analysis of the “time on task” issue in all of our schools!