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Light Drizzle Fog/Mist Oceanside Middle School will introduce flexible schedule
‘Blocks’ will give teachers more control
Building from successful programs that Oceanside Middle School Principal Dr. Allison Glickman-Rogers says make it one of the best middle schools in the state, OMS will be changing the schedule it has used for 30 years to create a new learning environment for students.
Glickman-Rogers outlined the new schedule at a Board of Education meeting on Nov. 15. Taking into account declining student enrollment at the middle school level, economics and the changes in curriculum being brought about by the new Core Curriculum Standards, the school will do away with its current master schedule in favor of “block” scheduling, which groups students together for longer blocks of time and flexible periods.
Instead of having their core classes spread out over the day, students will have a morning and afternoon block of core classes.
“What that means is that each student would have in the morning, for example, a period of English and a period of social studies back to back — an a.m. block — and then a p.m. block of math/science,” Glickman-Rogers explained at the meeting. “This block schedule has tremendous opportunities, potentials and variations.”
She explained how the system could be used by teachers. In the middle school, many classrooms are divided by removable partitions. So, for example, on a normal day, a math teacher would teach one period to Section A, then one period to Section B.
With a flexible block schedule, however, if the teacher thought there was a need for extended class time that would benefit the students — if he or she were introducing a new subject, for example — the teacher would coordinate with the corresponding teacher in their block (science, in this case) and teach a double period of math to Section A one day and to Section B the next. While Section A was in a double period of math, Section B would be in a double period of science. They would switch the next day.
This format would also give the teachers the option to co-teach a double-period class.
