Block Scheduling for the Win

We’re coming to the end of our block schedule trial period, and I think it has worked well.  It’s always nice when ideas are in fact as good as you’d hoped.

So how does block scheduling working for us?  I divided 6 of her classes into categories; writing and literature are in language arts, math and science are in stem, art and computer programing are electives. That way she would have some variety to what she did each day, no one wants to spend hours just writing papers or solving equations. Then I looked closer at the workload of each class. Literature has more reading than writing and chemistry has more reading than math. So literature and math are on one day while chemistry and writing are on the other.  Art and computer are pretty equal so they were randomly assigned.

History is still an everyday subject. Latin class is two days a week and assignments are done the other three days. 

I had handwritten out my assignment book, so that is staying.  It’s too much work to rewrite. But I use different colored highlighters to mark what has been done each day. Merry’s assignment pages were typed so each week I am simply rearranging the classes and reprinting. 

It’s still early in the year, but it looks like we’ve found a solution that works.

Sixth grade lesson plans

It is almost August, we are a month from the the next school year, yet I felt like I was trying to beat the clock finishing up my lesson plans!

The house we are living in is being sold so we thought it might be a good time to look at moving.  We'd been talking about buying a house for the past year and now it is time. So between shopping and cleaning, packing and touring next month promises to be a busy one. I didn't want to wake up on the first day of school and not be prepared so I preemptively got it all (mostly) ready now!

With the exception of a few workbooks I still need to purchase, all of the sixth grade curriculum is in this file box.

And I've made a checklist and lessons plans for each week!  While my plans are not yet final, at least one subject will be reevaluated after the first week, it's nice to have them done.

That's one less thing to worry about during our big move.  Now I just need to make sure I don't lose the crate!