New kids on the block adjust

Modified schedule helps keep students interested

Posted: Sunday, September 04, 2005

A little bit of reading, a little bit of writing, toss in some lecturing here and there, then add a helping of hands-on activities - teachers say that's the recipe for keeping students engaged at Burney-Harris-Lyons Middle School, now operating on a block schedule similar to Clarke County's public high schools.


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Some teachers and students at high schools on the schedule - which extends classes to 90 minutes - have complained about the length of class periods and the scheduling problems they face, but the key to keeping Burney-Harris-Lyons students engaged and interested has been to plan classes that switch activities, though not lose focus, every 10 to 20 minutes, teachers said.

"The key thing is, you can't have 90 minutes of lecturing," said Martin Pracht, a seventh-grade science teacher. "You have to do 20 minutes of reading, then 20 minutes of hands-on activities, 20 minutes of group discussion about the activity, then 20 minutes of note-taking.

One monotonous hour-and-a-half of lecture would kill anybody. It would kill me!"

This is the second year the middle school has tried the block scheduling, and teachers like Pracht give it glowing praise - the extended class times have made it easier for him to get through an entire lab with students, rather than wasting time cleaning up halfway through and then setting up again the next day.

Instead, he can work through the entire explanation of how to use a microscope, allow students to look at prepared slides, then give them time to make their own slides and examine them, before they have to clean up and write about the lesson.

In some cases, the longer class periods more closely resemble what students are used to from elementary school, educators say - students generally spend about 75 minutes on a reading lesson in elementary school. Moving to a traditional middle school schedule, which has six or seven class periods, means they only have 50 minutes of language arts and lose one-third of the class time they're used to spending on the subject.

"I like (the block schedule) better than the other schedule," said Devante Derricotte, 13, an eighth-grader who was on the traditional 50-minute class schedule back in his sixth-grade year. "You get more class time this way."

Monira Al-Haroun Silk/Staff

 Eighth-grade student Tavoris Smith, 13, watches science teacher West Corley explain the reasons for building models as students make their own of "sea-floor spreading."

"And it helps you on the CRCTs," added classmate Ashley Miller, 13, referring to the state standardized Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests that provide benchmarks for scoring schools under state and federal accountability laws.

Such tests are never far from the minds of teachers, students or administrators these days, and the push for increased academic achievement is a key issue, particularly in middle schools, where students statewide struggled to make benchmarks last year. None of Clarke County's middle school's met all of their benchmarks on the spring 2005 CRCTs.

Block scheduling is becoming more and more popular as middle schools try to maximize class time - and learning time, said Burney-Harris-Lyons Principal Robbie Hooker said, who instituted the schedule at the school.

The school tried even longer class blocks last year - 110 minutes each - but that proved too long for students and teachers. This year, the school has set up four blocks of 90 minutes each, which allows students to take a math class every day. Other classes on are an alternating A-B schedule: On an "A" day, for instance, a student might take language arts, science and an elective such as art. On a "B" day, the student would take reading instead of language arts, social studies instead of science and a different elective, such as family and consumer science.

Monira Al-Haroun Silk/Staff

 From left, eighth-grade students Niesha Cobbs, 13, Jasmine Mattox, 13, and Byron Campbell, 14, react to a classmate's comments during Sabrina Robinson's 90-minute

language arts block last week at Burney-Harris-Lyons.

The school starts off the day with a shorter, 50-minute period of extended learning time that focuses on reading and language arts one semester, math the other, to give students a double shot of that subject. Students were confused when they began using the alternating schedule last year but have adapted to the pattern and found ways to keep track, such as color-coding days in the daily planners that every student is required to have, instructional lead teacher Tanya Long said.

Burney-Harris-Lyons isn't the only middle school in the area to use block scheduling - Oglethorpe Middle School has begun using the longer class periods, and this is the second year Westside Middle School in Barrow County has used the schedule.

"We wanted the increased instructional time it gave us," Principal Eli Welch said. "It gives more time for hands-on activities, and it also reduces the number of transitions in the hall."

An extra benefit of reducing the number of times students change classes is that it limits the amount of time they spend in the halls - where most discipline problems occur, teachers and administrators said.

"Our discipline problems have dropped," Welch said.

Westside Middle rolled out the block scheduling gradually, beginning last year with only 8th-grade classes using it. Before the first semester was over, sixth- and seventh-grade teachers realized they were falling behind the eigth-grade progress and asked to be put on the schedule, Welch said.

The school also built in 10-minute recess periods for each grade to burn off extra energy. Teachers also will try incorporate physical activities into lessons - rather than working out pulse and heart-rate activities on paper in a science class, for instance, students will jog in place for 30 seconds and then track their own pulse.

"You want to get them up and moving," Welch said.

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