Shorter Class Periods at Mills Middle School

For many students, the new school year holds little promise of spending time in an elective class. When students fall behind in courses, especially math and language arts, they are often placed in remedial or support classes to increase their achievement. This is often at the cost of their elective class. While they see other students attending band, art, or music classes, they are attending a second math or language arts class.

That has all changed for the students at Mills Middle School.  Rather than attending the 6 class periods they had last year, students are attending 8 class periods Now all students will be enrolled in double periods of math and language arts which school leaders are hoping will bolster test scores as they are receiving pressure under the federal No Child Left Behind program.

Students who are not having difficulties in the targeted subjects will be able to use the time from the double period s to do extra projects and deeper reading.

Monday, August 11th was the first day the middle school used the new schedule. Teachers, parents, and students all seemed to like the change and adjusted well.

In order to fit everything into a regular school day, administrators collapsed the 3 period rotating lunches into 2, gave students 3 minutes to get to class instead of 5 minutes, and decreased the amount of time the students will have to change for P.E.

Folsom Cordova Unified is one of many schools testing the new double period schedule. Studies have shown that students placed in remedial courses do not always have increased success in the subject. “The kids thought they were being punished” Janie DeArcos, the assistant superintendent said of students who had to take remedial courses instead of an elective. Remedial courses often proved repetive and inneffective.

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Posted by Michelle Ventress on Aug 12 2008. Filed under Schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.