Reply to State set to keep MS math minutes requirement that will likely cut electives (but delaying it a year)

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Reply to "State set to keep MS math minutes requirement that will likely cut electives (but delaying it a year)"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Yeah, what about an 8 period day with 7 or 8 periods a week of math? That seems better than six 60-minute periods, given pre-teen attention spans.[/quote]

Figuring out 7 or 8 periods a week of math would be too complicated schedule-wise... if they did an 8 period day (or block schedule) it would probably be double-period math.  But that would then make every other class shorter, which I don't think they would be willing to do for ELA at least (there are rumors the state will require 60 minutes of ELA in middle school soon too.)[/quote]

A block schedule doesn't have 8 periods in a day.  It has 4 periods, with classes taken every other day, covering 8 class periods, total.  With an MS advisory part-period of about a half hour, they get 80 minutes for each class period.  Over 2 weeks/10 days, those 5 periods for a particular class total 400 minutes.  They'd need 600 to get to the MSDE mandate (300 per week of Math instruction), whenever it would be, so making one period a support block, with half the time for Math and half the time for ELA, gets you to exactly the minutes that would be required if MSDE was married to the idea for Math and was planning it for English, too.

With the more common schedule of 7 periods in a day, there are about 43 minutes for each class when there is an advisory part-period.  Over the same 2 weeks, that's 430 minutes for one subject (vs. the 400 minutes, above), but with nothing that really could easily be used to get to that 300 minutes per week/600 per 2 weeks without completely sacrificing advisory for additional Math, and that wouldn't have enough left over if they added the ELA minutes requirement.

Block also spends less ineffective startup time at the beginning of class because that only occurs 5 times over the 2 weeks instead of 10 with the 7-period-daily schedule, negating the perceived minutes advantage of the 7-period schedule: on paper, it's 430 vs. 400 over 2 weeks, but probably losing 5 minutes every other day on a relative basis (10 class startups vs. 5) / 25 minutes over the two weeks of effective learning time.  And the fewer transitions each day in a block schedule also help add minutes to instruction, overall (i.e., for other classes).

Why go to 6 periods or some crazy asymmetric schedule when there's a scheduling solution that works so well already where it's been employed at some MS magnets?  The contract with the teacher's union would need to be adjusted to hash out relative burden vs. planning periods, etc., but that has to happen anyway.

And that's not even considering the benefit of a possible elective or study hall period in block if MSDE comes to its senses and realizes that, while some students clearly will benefit from the extra Math (and possibly ELA) time, others really, really don't need that, and even will be turned off from the subjects if forced to spend less meaningful time there when they don't need the support.[/quote]

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