Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums High School Do you have Block scheduling?

Cookie, that is too bad. Is your school board appointed or elected? What did they say in the next meeting, which I'm sure was well-attended?

I wonder if there are hybrid schedules, where some classes are 1.5 hours for a few months, others like APs go all year to meet up with the exam? Or varying calendars where the courses have staggered start and end dates? Seems like that would work well both blocks, and eliminate 6 cumulative exams and a paper in 3 days around the holidays.

When I asked our middle school about sending our son to high school for math they said that different block schedules in the two schools would make it impossible. One school has an N-day schedule, the other has an M-day schedule, and M is not equal to N. If they considered that some gifted middle school students should be taking high school classes, maybe they would have set M equal to N, but gifted students don't officially exist in most of Massachusetts. Unofficially there are a lot of them.

That is really frustrating! What you had before this year sounded wonderful... so the cynic in me just has to ask - did this happen because of budget cuts? I so hope not, and I hope that the opinions of teachers, students and parents will be taken into account and you'll all be able to persuade your school board to switch back to the previous schedule.

polarbear

Polarbear, why would block scheduling be more expensive?

I'll pm you

Reviving an old thread to ask, if you have block scheduling in your high schoo:
How is lunch worked into it?
How many of the blocks or periods are classes? Are any of them free/study hall/additional elective?
Does your school also offer any "early bird" classes?

Our high school has a block schedule, none of the classes are "extras" - the kids have the same total # of classes they would have if they went to all classes every day. Lunch is not considered a "period" here - the entire high school eats lunch at the same time ever day. No classes are offered during that time, but there are a ton of clubs that meet over lunch. We have a few "early bird" classes, insanely early considering how early first hour starts anyway! They aren't in any core academics, but in elective subjects, and only happen when an extremely motivated teacher wants to teach them

polarbear

We always had 5 1 hour periods at high school. You did each subject 4 times a week and most kids did 5 subjects - in the first few years the extra 5 hours were allocwted to PE, art and music but senior students could use them for study or add a sixth subject.

I have trouble imaging 7 classes a day but i know my parents had that although they had double periods for science labs etc. I quite like the 3 short 1 long a week as it reminds me of university - 2 lectures, 1 tutorial and a lab.

When I was in high school, we had a block schedule, and it looks like my HS still uses similar block schedule with an additional block added in.

When I went, from what I recalled it was a 7 day block schedule, 7 blocks with 6 periods a day so one block was dropped a day (today it is a 8 day, 8 block with 2 blocks dropped a day - meaning a class is assigned block x and each day 2 blocks are dropped so that you have 6 classes a day). Lunch when I went was split into 3 sections of the largest period (1 and 1/2 hour with 1/2 hour for lunch) where depending on location of your class, you went first lunch, second lunch or third (if you had second lunch, then you had class for 1/2 hour, lunch for 1/2 and then return back to class for the last 1/2 hour). Some classes like ones with labs may be assigned a full block and an additional partial block for labs and electives may be partial block (i.e. block 1 for days A, C, E was music and block 1 for days B, D, F was art at one time for me).

Since it was a 7 day schedule, first week would be days A-E and then next Monday started on Day F-G and then cycle through.

It seemed confusing the first week when I went there, but then seemed like second nature after that. Most of us had the 5 core academics and then one block was for gym and lab (required) and then one was for electives or study hall/free period unless you had a class that needed more blocks (one honors English class took two blocks). In order to graduate, you had to take X number of electives from art/music/theater. But most of us usually had a free period at least half of the days.