Period or Block Scheduling: Which is Better?

With the recent switch from IXL to I-Ready, students and teachers of Elkins High School are intrigued about the possible switch from the well-established block scheduling to the unfamiliar period scheduling.

So far no official statements have been made about whether the school will switch how they schedule however, rumors that the school will swap have been rampant over the past few weeks.

The reasoning behind the rumors is that the school may become more statistical in how they look at the school’s performance and if there are anomalies then they may switch up how the school works.

“It’s important to consider what courses are better suited to a block and some are suited to a shorter period of time, for example, a biology or chemistry class may need 3 or 4 hours to a class but an English class may need a shorter allotted time, we need more flexibility with scheduling, seat time doesn’t necessarily mean learning, unfortunately, alternative ways of scheduling are logistically complicated and are hard to implement.” Mr.Carroll said

Period scheduling has many possibilities to what could happen, they could make it where students choose 8 classes and swap between classes each week similar to the A and B day scheduling that some students take, or they could make it 8 classes a day.

If set to 8 classes a day students would only have around 40 minutes per class compared to the hour and 20 minutes that they have currently.

However, considering the extra class time some teachers may not take advantage of that time and some classes may have nothing to do with the latter half of the class, this may be remedied by giving students more work during class time but if there is too much work then there may be homework.

With the potential switch, classes would last all year instead of the current system w

hich has students going to different classes after the semester. Both teachers and students enjoy the current system because it means that there is less work to do overall.

Teachers have fewer students to worry about and students have fewer classes to worry about per semester. The switch could potentially put stress on both students and teachers and could bleed over into personal lives as teachers have more to grade and students have to work and study for twice their current amount of classes.

Although most may see the switch from block to period scheduling as a bad thing there are many possible benefits to the switch that may not be seen as of yet. When official statements come out stating what may or may not happen, students and teachers may welcome the change.