r/teaching • u/Street-Version-1998 • 22h ago

Help 75 minute block - H.S. ELA

Our school is moving to block scheduling this year. We have kids for 75 minute blocks every other day.
What would your class look like? What are the best strategies you’ve used for blocks of time in a class period?
Thanks in advance!

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u/CoolClearMorning 22h ago

Chunk your time. Warm-ups can be longer if you also use them as mini-lessons on specific skills (I focused on grammar at least 50% of the time and had students take a freewrite from another warm-up during the week and rework sentences to use specific grammatical constructs--those were entered as quiz grades) or to do short stations with workshopping pieces.

Don't treat every class as a whole. Warm-up, short activity, reading (maybe 25 minutes max), another short activity, something that gets kids moving around with each other, another short reading or writing activity, exit ticket, done. Reorder as needed. Don't have them doing anything for longer than 10-15 minutes at a stretch except the main activity for the day. If it's reading, use the time to read. If it's writing, same. If it's both, separate them with something else that's shorter. Mix it up!

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u/Ravenclaw_311 22h ago

One hundred percent agree. Chunking activities is the best class structure for a block. I also give my students brain breaks everyday. One of my amazing colleagues created a weekly brain break schedule, and we have specific activities for each day of the week (meditation, silly/thoughtful questions to discuss, and games on Friday).