Before reading this article on changing the schedule at your school, we recommend you review our Scheduling Considerations for Outdoor Instruction as well as the sample school schedules found on this page.

Once you have an understanding of what to consider when creating new or adapting existing schedules for the appropriate instructional model at your school or district — along with the sampling of various schedules that may pertain to the populations of students that you serve — we have outlined a simple step-wise process for how one can go about shifting the current schedule at a school site or district.

Steps to Changing your Schedule

Step 1. Work under the assumption that there are two staff per class or cohort (e.g., two educators per learning hub small cohort; teacher and instructional aide per hybrid class). This allows for maximum flexibility of scheduling as well as supports the staff and school site to robustly implement the model in case of a staff absence.

Step 2. Review your current instructional weekly and daily schedule for the total amount of instructional minutes. For example: A district or school may have a daily minimum for instructional minutes (i.e., the combination of live/synchronous teacher instruction and asynchronous/independent work time; e.g., transitional kindergarten/kindergarten 3 hours; 1st grade–3rd grade 3 hours, 50 min; 4th grade–5th grade 4 hours).

Step 3. Review any school or district policies for mandated synchronous minutes and asynchronous minutes per day. Note that these policies may vary by grade span.

Step 4. Review the instructional time blocks for “core” curriculum and instruction (e.g., Designated English Language Development) that must happen with a certificated staff/credentialed teacher. For example, this may include English Language Arts, Mathematics, Science and History-Social Science at least twice a week. Additionally, Designated English Language Development (multi-tiered system of supports) minutes are not mandated but need to happen every day and typically run between 20 to 30 minutes a day with smaller groups grouped by proficiency.

Step 5. Review the small group instructional time blocks. Depending on the type of schedule and instructional model, small groups can alternate between in-person classroom teacher instruction and outdoor learning; asynchronous work and outdoor learning; and so on. Remember to note how many small groups a classroom teacher will meet with per day and build in the appropriate time.

Step 6. Review all asynchronous time blocks that can be used for time outdoors (e.g., engaging in outdoor learning, recreation, asynchronous work completion outside, and so on).

Step 7. Remember to make science a priority and find additional moments in the schedule for engaging science experiences outside of the core curricular time.