Meet Me in the Middle: Chapter 9

Chapter 9:

In this chapter Wormeli supports his belief that with block scheduling students get a better education. He believes that with the longer eighty minute block teachers are able to better plan out an effective class period. He gives an example of how he would plan out an eighty minute block. First the teacher comes up with the objectives they want the students to meet in the lesson, how to get students involved in the lesson, the teacher then will create the lesson sequence and extensions. Wormeli also stresses the importance of summarizing the lesson for students over the course of the lesson so that they don’t forget the material or get confused. Also, Wormeli suggests that teachers should assess students both formative and summative means. Lastly, Wormeli raises the issue of student absences; when a student misses a day of classes in a block schedule they miss a much larger class period. His suggestions were to have students have partners they can go to for missing work, have a homework posting service, or make yourself more available to the students to go over the missing work. Overall, Wormeli believes that having middle schools use a block schedule creates a better atmosphere since there is less transition time and more time for teachers to get the material across to students.

I agreed with some of the points that Wormeli raised, but others I thought were crap-assed. For example, block scheduling does not lessen the amount of absences students have. I’ve been to multiple schools that were block schedule and they had huge problems with attendance and mischief. For example, one year between classes (eight different times) students managed to write bomb on various items and cause the entire school to evacuate. I think that a big plus of block scheduling is it prepares students for college, because you have a day in between to get the homework done. The one thing I didn’t like about block schedules was the amount of homework you would have. Since we would cover more material in class, we would have more homework. I believe that you get more homework in a block schedule then you do when you have all your classes in one day. I’ve had both systems and I feel like block scheduling is really difficult for students to deal with. It can be confusing and it is a large chunk of time to expect a student to pay attention without a break. I think that I like the other type of schedule more since it’s more consistent, but then again that just suits my personality type.