Block Scheduling Isn’t the Culprit—Lecturing Is! Go with Brain-Compatible Lesson Design!
I was talking to a parent of two high school students the other day about my passion to work with teachers on how to design lessons so students are engaged and interested in the content being taught. She started to say something about how block scheduling was a big part of the problem and then stopped and said, “Well, let me put it this way…what do you think of block scheduling?” She had already tipped her hand as to her negative opinion about it, but I gave her my thoughts, as follows…
Block scheduling is benign. When a parent says my child is so bored in block classes, I grimace, because it doesn’t have to be so. The bottom line is students are bored when the primary mode of delivering instruction is lecture/question/answer/lecture, etc. The parent I was talking to responded, “But the students can tolerate it more when the class periods are shorter.” The sad thing is that she is right!
The issue isn’t whether the class is 45, 60 or 90 minutes in length. The real issue is whether teachers know how to design lessons that actively involve learners throughout the entire class period—regardless of the time allotted. Personally, my preference is for longer periods, because I love to have the time to develop the lesson, stage the different learning activities, and involve learners using strategies that communicate the facts and concepts they need to know building one upon the other. In a 90 minute class, my students will have on-your-own reflection, journal writing, partner and/or cooperative learning, peer-teaching, strategic reading of selected content (in each content area—not just English), real-life application, and closure activities to help cement the days lessons in their brains until tomorrow.
I am aware of the national call to have teachers better prepared with knowing the content of what they are teaching. Yes, we need math specialists and social studies and science teachers that have more than a superficial knowledge of the content, but acquiring the facts and concepts of the subject area will fall substantially short if teachers do not know how to design lessons that actively engage learners! (Brain-compatible, “how” to teach ideas can be found in my book Teaching Smarter with the Brain in Focus available at
