Time management

“Making the Most of Classroom Time” by Weinstein focuses on time management and ways that teachers can increase ALT (academic learning time). The section that i wanted to focus on was the section on ways to increase academic learning time. What drew me to this section was the evidence of exactly how much time was wasted versus how much actual academic learning was taking place. 

The reason this section stuck out in my mind was due to my first experience inside a classroom this week as a tutor. From the start of class my teacher wrote up a timeline of the class schedule for that hour. They had two learning objectives they had to get through before they could watch a movie. Every time the class got out of hand he reminded them that they were taking away from their own movie time and that every interruption just took off more time. He illustrated this by deducting time on the board from the movie when things began to get out of control. This method really seemed to work with the kids and soon everyone was cooperating and working together to get through the objectives. However a teacher can not always revert to an extrinsic reward to regulate student’s behaviors. That being said I think that the timeline is something I will use later as a teacher because the kids really see exactly how much time they are wasting by being disruptive. 

One of Weinstein’s suggestions for increasing ALT was to increase the hours of learning. This can be done through block scheduling. I was never part of a school system that had block scheduling; however I had friends and sibling that participated in this type of scheduling. When classes are blocked for a longer period of time the teacher has time to do the tedious tasks like attendance without taking away from actual learning time. The flip side to this is that if the teacher is having a hard time keeping his/her students engaged for an hour what’s to say that adding an hour will increase the amount of learning.   

A great strategy that Weinstein suggests and that I observed during tutoring is to increase hours of learning by monitoring the student’s progress. As mentioned above my teacher started the hour with goals in mind and time limits to complete those goals. He also monitored progress by constantly engaging students in the assignments they were working on. Asking questions like how does this relate to what we learned yesterday and what did you get for number 4. By including every kid into the assignments they were working on the kids needed to be paying attention in order to keep up with the other students. He did not simply give an assignment and give a time limit to complete it. He kept the students engaged by having the entire class work together to get the answers.   

After reading this section I realize how important time management can be to a class. How much actual learning is lost when a teacher is constantly being distracted and has to stop. Time is something that as a teacher I am going to really work on. The line then becomes how much time do you spend on each student and what benefits the class the most. Is it stopping the disruption, or ignoring it and continuing on with the lesson?