Weekly Block Schedule...have you tried it?

[mom31257]

I am considering trying a weekly block schedule with dd after Thanksgiving. By weekly block schedule, I mean doing 1-2 subjects a day and completing the whole week's assignments in that one day. If you've ever tried something similar, would you share your experience? Obviously some things would overlap such as studying for tests, some writing assignments, etc. I'm thinking if would help dd really focus in and learn more about a subject rather than having bits and pieces daily.

 

Thanks for any comments!

[dbmamaz]

I tried this my first year homeschooling my then 8-th grader . . turns out he did NOT have the attention span to do a subject for more than 30 minutes, so we gave up

[Free Indeed]

We are trying this with my son. Just started, but i think it will work better.

[Joan in GE]

We did this in ds3's last year of high school with math in order to get in the math necessary for the AP Calc...So he did Precalc one semester and Calc AB the second working about 3 hours/day/5 days a week on math....He was dedicated because he wanted to graduate early.

 

I know there are school districts that do this but my bro who teaches in one doesn't really like it. He says that they ended up having to reduce the total amount of material covered.

 

Now that I think about it, I think you are proposing something a little different. In his district they do the subject every day for one semester, then the second semester have a completely different subject...

 

The way that you are proposing to do it is by the day/week rather than for a semester....For some subjects, esp foreign language and math, daily confrontation with the material helps the brain master it - IMHO....For others, like history, literature, etc....perhaps the social sciences - the process seems different somehow. But I'm no expert....

 

Joan

[mom31257]

 

Now that I think about it, I think you are proposing something a little different. In his district they do the subject every day for one semester, then the second semester have a completely different subject...

 

The way that you are proposing to do it is by the day/week rather than for a semester....For some subjects, esp foreign language and math, daily confrontation with the material helps the brain master it - IMHO....For others, like history, literature, etc....perhaps the social sciences - the process seems different somehow. But I'm no expert....

 

Joan

 

 

You are right that I was proposing something different. I have questioned the daily versus weekly aspect as well. I find that dd is procrastinating with her foreign language and doing it all in a day or two each week now. She takes an outside Spanish class, and despite, doing it this way, she's making great grades. It caused me to wonder if she might actually learn better this way.

[regentrude]

When DD was still doing all school work at home, she got to choose which subject she wanted to work on for how long. She usually choose longer time blocks per subject, because she found this more efficicent. We do not "schedule"; work has to be copmleted at the end of the year, and I remind her if a subject gets neglected. It worked great. I give my son the same freedom, except for demanding that math be done daily, because his attention span is nt conducive to more than 90 minutes of math (whereas DD could easily do math for 2.5 hours in one stretch)

 

We now have a sort of a block schedule, simply because the work DD is required to complete for her outside classes is more time consuming than a mere hour per day. She has physics homework due twice a week, and each assignment takes 2-3 hours and is done on the previous day after lecture. She has French three times a week and homework due the next class, with writing assignments and longer projects taking up more time.

 

I would let the student try out different things and choose what sheduling works best for her.

[elegantlion]

We started off doing this, had to modify, and are now returning to this. Part of the issue is focus time. My ds is able to focus for a lot longer now. instead of once a week, we are trying to do most things two times per week. To make it work we've had to drop a .5 credit class as it was not getting done.

 

My concern is also making sure enough material is being covered. A few subjects are more difficult for ds and I'm not sure how they will work out. As it stand we've been getting two good days a week anyway.

 

Because we still do most of our work in the same room, I'm available, we discuss a lot....I find having a 10-15 minute chat before school to be a good idea. Kind of like a little pep talk before getting started.

 

We're also into the Great Books portion of our history study and I plan to read a little together every morning. Ds enjoys that.

 

In creating the schedule, my goal is to help him work more independently in some subjects, to be more accountable as well. We had a lot of discussion about this last week. He was very clear about which subjects fry his brain and he cannot work after he completes those.

 

Until Christmas we are going to try 3 subjects per day plus the chat time and reading time. He does independent reading in the evening. Our previous block schedule had 4 subjects per day, it was not enough time to get 2-3 days work done.I imagine we'll have to tweak it again, handing off a little more responsibility to ds.

[Lori D.]

"Weekly Block Schedule...have you tried it?"

 

Yes and no.

 

We were able to do a 1x/week schedule with a few of the 0.5 credit courses, such as Economics and Government, where we could complete an entire chapter/unit/section at a time, and then the next week's material was not really related to the previous material.

 

We were able to manage 2x/week block-type sessions for History and Science (with a 3rd day for projects, papers, labs, etc.), but those are subjects that build on what came before, and we often had to spend quite a bit of time the following week reviewing before we could continue. I suppose that was good, as it was double exposure...

 

However, both of our DSs needed daily exposure for Writing, Literature, and especially the Math. They don't like writing and would NOT have wanted to have spent 5 hours in one day a week to do a week's worth of work. And NO way they could have absorbed 5 math lessons in one day. Algebra 2 and beyond especially gets *hard*! We often had to spread out a lesson over 2 days, as younger DS maxxed out on his ability to focus and absorb math after about 50 minutes.

 

When DSs took a dual enrollment course of foreign language at the local community college, the class met 2x/week for 2 hours. DSs then did homework and studied on 2 other days of the week.

 

We ended up with a schedule in which 4x/week we did a few core subjects daily for 45-75 minutes (depending on which subject), and then did a few subjects as longer block sessions about 2x/week. Fridays were "finish up" days plus some extracurricular activities (although, by 11th and 12th grades, the extracurriculars on Fridays were just 1x/every 4 to 6 Fridays, and so Fridays became more of a regular day).

 

However, I understand some students do well with this style of learning, and many schools do a block schedule of completing one year's material in one semester, doing 4 classes this way in one semester, and 4 in the following semester, so that they complete 8 credits in one year. However, they have each of the 4 classes each day of the week, just for a longer "double length" class period.

 

BEST of luck in scheduling what works best for your family! Warmest regards, Lori D.