Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Free time at school

Our boys' school is a mixed age Montessori that allows kids to work at their own pace. A central feature of the school culture is that once a student finishes their assignments, they get free time.

At the beginning of the week they get about 60 assignments so it roughly translates into twelve per day. If they finish twelve on Monday by 2:00pm, they get an hour of free time. If they finish all 60 on Thursday afternoon, they get free time all day on Friday. Earning a lot of free time results in a change in assignments (moving on to more difficult material) but the teachers vary on how much they think is too much.

Free time is for crafts, reading or writing for pleasure, board games, making movies (older kids), playing with trains and blocks (younger kids), drawing and doing research on a topic of personal interest that isn't in the curriculum (like care of a type of pet or something like that).

As a practice, what are your thoughts on this?

Free time sounds like daycare not school? Free time sounds like a reasonable reward for hard work and an additional learning opportunity?

Just curious how others would view this.

One hour a day used in those ways would be OK. One hour playing 'learning games' on a computer would not. I would be more worried that my child was getting a lot of free time when slower kids were not as it could cause I'll feeling. Could you get a ruling for your child? No more than one hour a day before tasks get harder. Or is the free time making him work faster?

Learning games are definitely in the mix but with limited computers no kid gets all their time on them.

I could certainly ask about a limit for my kids but I understand choice of work and free time are central tenets of the director's philosophy. Choice of work is deciding which of the 60 assignments to do on any particular day.

DS6 works faster for free time. He has to complete more assignments of greater difficulty than his peers to earn free time. He is ok with this.

DS9 (2e - not one to work on grammar or math facts for fun) probably would not get anything done without the reward of free time.

Well, I think it depends on the child. If the kid is using that time to progress his talent or is genuinely refreshed by it I see no issue. However, using this method as a one size fits all I air on the side of caution. Depending on how its applied those who finish work quickly can get bored waiting for others, and some who are slow can get anxious seeing those finish quickly.

Personally any free time I enjoyed progressing my own independent knowledge outside of school.

For many years, this was more or less how we home schooled. Finish all your work for the week by Thursday afternoon, and Friday is yours to use as you wish (short of all day on a digital device). I plan on roughly three hours worth of work per day, with the rest for choice activities. If the work isn't finished because it was too difficult, then I back off on expectations. If the work is finished in much less than three hours, then I bump up the pace. (If the work isn't finished because you spent all day on Scratch, then I guess you just used your choice time for the week!)

It turns out that most of our children are not extrinsically motivated, so "rewards" are less effective than personal relevance of the actual topics/tasks.

When the one who attended school was in school, the promise of free time was not nearly as motivating as the socializing that occurred during work time, which prevented early completion of work. That was also when there was a huge mismatch between the level of classwork and the child's challenge level, though.

Unfortunately I think it is a lot of these things, some good, bad and just odd all mixed in. The bad is "I spent free time getting to a new level on Bookworm", the good is "I made this cool comic book with friends 1 & 2" and the odd is "I helped friend create action figures of all our classmates if they were transformed into their alter ego guinea pig. I'm a small beige and gray guinea pig."

It is DS9 that I'm wondering about.

DS6 likes to spend his free time setting up train tracks with his friends. This seems like a fine way for a kindergartener to spend part of his day.

I think I'm going to just let it go. I might send some of our more educational games, science kits, etc. that DS9 can share if I know he has a lot of free time that day.

Er-- well, good, bad, and weird is about how DD spent her free time whether it was front or back end (as aeh noted-- during work time or as a reward for not dawdling during).

So I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing so much as inevitable, and at least in a high quality Montessori setting, probably one that is better on average than neutral.

At school this was a disaster because DD (skipped) woukd then try to help the others in the class who were not quite receptive to the idea of a younger kid helping them. Eventually the teacher would just let her read books that she brought in for the purpose.

Not quite the same but we have always approached homework and after school work like this.

Work first then play was/is what we try to drum in.

Procrastinate all night or focus and then be rewarded for applying that focus.

Rusczyk's emphasis on the need for unstructured time really resonated with me.

But that time needs to be earned, IMO.

Trying to instill a work hard/play hard ethos.

Not sure that this approach is 100% effective but DD has procrastinated less lately which could just be a development thing or because this approach has helped - finally (for the time being, at least).