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

In my recent question about high school bell schedules, I was interested to see so many block schedules. Does this work out well for your gifted students? Pros and cons? What happens with performance-oriented classes like music and dance, especially if that is a special area of interest? What about 2e students?

Well.. we only have a 'partial block'. What that means is the students attend each class 4 days a week. 3 days for a ~45 minute period, and one day a week for ~90 minutes. (There are two 'block' days.) This gives teacher a chance to do labs, assign in-class essays, and many put tests of these days. Block is good for certain subjects like science & English. But less helpful for math & language where meeting more often is useful than a longer period. It is also very good for classes like music and art.

One reason my son likes block days there are fewer classes to study for on those days. On block days you won't get 5 tests in one day. For him I think it works OK for some classes and less for others. It depends on how the teacher uses the time. A 90 minute lecture isn't going to over very well, but most teachers do something to mix up those days by doing some sort of class or group work. In addition I personally think my son does better with blocks because he has some challenges switching gears. Going to 7 classes all in 7 hours is a bit emotionally exhausting, although I know the kids get used to it. So it depends on what 2E challenge your child has but I personally think it helps my son.

The local high school does all classes on Monday for like 20 minutes each (it's also the district wide early release day) and then four days of 90 minute class periods.

My kids went to a private school that had three days of 45 minute periods and two days of 90 minute periods. They hated the block days because the classes seemed to drag on and on. I hated the block days because the teachers seemed to do 45 minute lessons and then nothing for the rest of the period. The only teacher who was able to use the block period effectively was the science teacher.

Kai, 20-minute periods? I wonder what they do in HS in 20 minutes? Other than admin, like collecting/returning HW, giving a syllabus for the week, etc. (We have early release in the,elementary school on Monday, too but not in MS or HS, though Hs has a late start about once a month. The classes get compressed, so you know you won't have a test that day, but maybe a quiz.)

Bluemagic, I wonder about blocks for music. It's a long time to play or sing, though it gives plenty of time to assemble instruments (DS briefly switched to trumpet because it's faster to assemble/disassemble than clarinet! But his emboucheur wasn't right for it) and time to settle in, warm up, and do theory...for kids who are interested in theory. Some just want to play.

Woah, early release every Monday, for the whole district? What on earth is the reasoning for this?

Typically the weekly early release periods are utilized for teacher meetings, teacher training, and district administration and planning.

My DD likes the block schedule because it helps spread out her homework load. She never has to prepare for more than four classes on any one day. She also has a two day spread to get things done and work around her extra-curricular activities schedule. Since she can get homework for both her Monday and Tuesday classes done over the weekend, she only has to figure out how to get things done for W, TH, and F. She finds it much less stressful than her middle school schedule where all of her classes met everyday.

Not a fan here. The blocks are set up to work perfectly as long as a person is all in one grade. If a child is grade-accelerated, they get schedule conflicts, no time for lunch on some days, and so forth.

Let alone the problem if a child is in two different schools, one of which uses the block schedule, and one of which does not. It makes problems.

DeeDee, can you explain why grade acceleration or dual enrollment in high school is at issue with block scheduling? Is it if the block schedule has classes move around from day to day? (Not all block schedules do that.) This is interesting!

My son goes to a school that had block scheduling last year but dropped it this year. Nobody wanted to drop it except the school board. Teachers, students and parents loved it.

Now we have 7 regular periods a day.

Before there were 4 classes for half the year and 4 classes the second half the year.

Advanced math students could get in tons of math classes by taking a math every semester until they ran out of classes. Foreign Lang students could take Spanish 1-3 and have time for both AP Language and AP Lit. Many student entered specific programs (like a medical program or an avionics program) and arts students had plenty of time for plenty of arts classes (you get 4 extra classes over your time at high school with the 4x4 schedule).

They had provisions for those taking AP classes so they were ready in May. I think it depended on the particular AP...I am not exactly sure how it worked because we were switched to the 7 period day.