Jul 18, 2011

Timetable/Scheduling

I can't seem to get away from school. After reading The Book Whisperer and No More, I'm Done, I started thinking about my timetable and how the students day should be structured. I wasn't really all that excited about what I had handed into the office, and lets be honest, what you hand in, isn't always what you actually do. The first timetable has math first thing in the am followed by some LA work, lunch more LA work and then Science/Social etc. I've always scheduled it this way because I wanted a large chunk of time for LA. Unfortunately, my day isn't ideal and I've got Music and Library scheduled into larger chunks of my timetable. There are certain parts of my day that I can not change (Gym, Library, Music) because of scheduling conflicts and times given by administration. However, I can change and modify the spaces that are not already scheduled. Our Alberta curriculum is very intense which means it's go, go, go all day long, of course with breaks in between.
Timetable 2
The second picture is a revised timetable with my LA/Social in am and Math/Science in pm. I've always taught math in the morning so this will be a huge change for me. I like the idea of concentrating on LA/Social all together in one area of the day. It allows me to prep and prepare things accordingly in a certain time rather than jumping all over the day. I'm questioning the hour and a half of math on Monday's and Fridays. I know that I will be introducing Math Work Stations so that I can meet with smaller groups of students. I'm thinking I will train students to come in from recess and start on Math Stations while I work with a small group of students, we would then do a group lesson with practice and I could then work with another group or individual students depending on their needs. In the past, I would have jumped at having an hour and a half of math time daily but if you don't always have a lesson and task that fills this time period you end up pulling your hair out.
The hour of writing in the morning would involve writer's workshop and Daily 5 writing. They would be one in the same but from what I've been reading they don't sound all that different, at least I didn't get that impression from Jennifer Jacobson's book No More, I'm Done. Students will read everyday in one of the Daily 5 blocks and the other will be a free choice. I've also got to fit in some time for Word Study, it takes a few minutes to sort their words & do their activities but it's an important part of my day and I don't have it scheduled in quite yet. 
I'm going to have to think about this some more as I work on planning more of my year. I know this will change and as I've typed and read I've already found some problems with this timetable. I'm going to review more of what others have done with their daily schedules and timetables and make revisions. I'll keep you posted. If you have any comments or ideas please feel free to leave them.

1 comment:

  1. A few thoughts, and what works for us might not work for you.

    Our whole grade level is on the same schedule. We usually try to do language arts 1st thing in the morning. We liked all of it together. Writing is at the end because we have some kids pulled from our classrooms (we do guided reading) for intervention (SRA). And those SRA kids get writing with us. Weird, right? They didn't ask me though.

    Anyway, we do content and math in the afternoons. We usually do an hour of math and 45 of content.

    I hate math at the end of the day, I've got to tell ya. They are exhausted by 1:30, especially at the beginning of the year.

    Good luck!

    ReplyDelete

Thank you very much for your comments.