Maximizing Instructional Time
There are so many things that go into a school day. As educators, we are being pulled in many different directions with all the required mandates, schedules, and a plethora of distractions and interruptions. However, the one thing we do know and can all agree on is that students only learn when instruction is taking place, when they are activiely engaged, and when they are putting in the work.
With all that being said, how do we maximize instructional time while minimizing down time? How do we take advantage of the time we have during the day to actively engage students in learning without wasting precious instructional opportunities? As teachers drive the bus in the classroom, they must evaluate what they do during the school day to determine if any activities waste time so that instructional time can be improved. Review the following suggestions/ideas to see if any of these will benefit your classroom:
1. Look at your daily routines to see if any of them take up unnecessary time. This may include morning unpacking routines, checking folders and homework, taking attendance, lunch routines, afternoon dismissal routines, etc. Although we know that routines are important for students and teachers and some of these things must be done; however, many of those activities take more time that necessary and eat up instructional minutes. Think about it, if you can trim down 5 minutes of routine activities each day, that gives you another 25 minutes of instructional time each week. That totals 900 extra minute for the 36 weeks of school, which translates into an additional 15 hours of instructional per year!
2. Look at how you do restroom/water fountain breaks. If you spend 20 minutes a day either letting students stand in line or sending students in and out of the classroom for restroom breaks, you just might possibly be losing 20 minutes of valuable instructional time each day. If this is the case, look for other ways to allow students to use the restroom. One thing I have noticed, is when students go to the restroom in pairs or groups, they have a tendency to stay longer because they are playing and socializing in the restroom, rather than being in the classroom learning! I see/hear this every day.
3. Look at how you plan for your day. Purposeful instructional planning should be taking place by every teacher in a classroom. Although lesson plans don't have to look like a book, they should be detailed enough to serve as a road map for teachers and should include standards/learning goals, instructional activities, independent work opportunities for students, formative assessments, and time frames for instruction...at the very minimum. Learning centers should be well planned, strategic, and support the instructional/learning goal for the student. As teachers approach the instructional day, they should know exactly what they plan to do, how they plan do to it, how long it will take to accomplish it,what the students will be doing, and how they will know when the students have reached their goal. Nothing in the instructional day should simply be left to chance. Always remember, if we fail to plan, we plan to fail!
4. Make sure you are well prepared. When you have detailed lesson plans to maximize instructional time, you will also be well prepared with all the necessary materials you will need to provide lessons to your students. Many times, if teachers have not adequately prepared, they will be standing at the copy machine making copies or frantically searching for instructional tools/items during scheduled instructional time....while students are left on their own and become disengaged in the lesson. Instructional time can be maximized when teachers are prepared with all necessary materials prior to the beginning of the school day and ready to go when the day begins. This also makes transitions a breeze!
5. Starting the instructional day on time. There are lots of distractors at the beginning and ending of the day....and also a lot to do. However, one important thing you must ask yourself is are you being purposeful by making sure you are beginning the instructional day when it should begin and ending the instructional day when it should end? You have probably heard the phrase, "teach bell-to-bell" and it actually means what it says. Are you taking too long in the morning to get the day started or are you ending the day too early each day? If you answer, "Yes", to any of these questions, what can you change to streamline your routine to have less downtime and more instructional time?
6. Minimizing personal distractions. Are your cellphones, email accounts, or social media accounts creating distractors for you in your classroom? Are you spending time texting and checking your cellphone and email to the point that it is taking away from instruction or helping students. Unfortunately, cellphones have become a distractor in all professions and have taken a toll on productivity in the workplace. Are we putting these away while students are present so that we can focus on them rather than what is going on in our cyber world? Something to think about.....
7. Following scheduled timelines. Are you leaving for lunch, PE, library time, etc. at your designated time and returning at your scheduled time? Are you stretching snack another five minutes per day? Are your students transitioning from one class to the other within minimal time frames? If we are losing valuable instructional time with any of these, then we must look for ways to improve in this area so that we don't lose precious learning time.
8. Maximizing each day. Is Friday just as important as Monday as? Are we as concerned with not wasting instructional time on Friday as we would are on Monday? In many elementary schools, Friday has turned into "test day" and "down day". Students are given tests in the morning or at the beginning of the class period (depending on the age level) and often times there is no strategic learning activities taking place the rest of the day/class period. Teachers sometimes use this time for movies, recess, longer snack times, etc. But think of the productive things that this time could be used for in the classroom. This can be a time for remediation or enrichment. It could be a time to engage students in hands-on learning activities that there wasn't time for during the week. It could be a time for additional writing activities or independent reading activities. Ok...the list could go on forever but you get the point. Time is like money and is very valuable. Every minute that is wasted we will never get back!
If we look for small ways to improve instructional time, everyone wins! Students have more opportunity to learn and teachers are much less stressed because they have more time to accomplish their goals. Sometimes it just takes a little creativity and adjusting. Let me know if I can help!
