Building A Master School Schedule

1. Building A Master School Schedule Free

Highland Elementary School Master Schedule Kindergarten First Grade Second Grade Third Grade Fourth Grade Fifth Grade Reading/Writing 8:50 – 9:50. Merrimack School District School Administrative Unit #26 36 McElwain Street Merrimack, NH.

Ames Middle School students will see significant changes to their schedules this fall, according to an informational presentation during Ames Community School District's June 17 board meeting.

The middle school's principal Yonas Michael and associate principal Jeremie Knutson presented the new master schedule for the 2019-20 academic year, highlighting several significant changes, including a reduction in the number of periods each day, and implementation of WIN and flex periods.

'Our goal for working through a new master schedule was to provide more equal access to all of our 1,100 students, improve the student experience by reducing non-instructional time and develop a more consistent schedule,' Michael said during the meeting.

Attempts to reach Michael for additional comment later in the week were unsuccessful.

The master schedule was created by a committee of approximately 18 teachers, counselors and administrators who redesigned the middle school schedule to, 'make better use of instructional time,' according to board agenda documents. It was then shown to an advisory council of roughly 35 parents to gather feedback.

It also was presented to parents of incoming sixth-grade students during a transition night on May 16. Michael said these groups helped contribute new ideas and changes to ensure the final product is successful.

'We did our best to really look at all lenses through this. We do not have something that everyone's going to be 100 percent happy with, but our goal here was to meet the academic needs of 1,100 students and do the best that we can with it,' Michael said.

One of the biggest changes to the schedule, affecting sixth, seventh and eighth-grade students, is a switch from nine-period days to seven-period days.

According to Michael, the original nine-period day was created with the idea of having blocked literacy and math from sixth through eighth grade. However, that never came to fruition and it instead caused inequities within the building.

'When you have an eighth-grade literacy teacher who is teaching seven sections of literacy in a day, and a sixth-grade teacher teaching three sections of literacy, that becomes hard to justify,' he said. 'We needed to address some of those things.'

Knutson said the seven-period structure will add roughly 12 minutes of instruction time to each period, totaling 53 minutes per class, and will allow additional time between classes for students to travel across the building, visit their lockers and use the restroom.

'We have some students who really do struggle to get from one end of our building to the other, and be able to take care of some of the things we want them to be able to take care of during that passing period,' Knutson said.

There also will be an alternate schedule allowing for an approximately 25-minute homeroom period, which will meet weekly.

Another big change to each grade level's schedule will be the addition of 'What I Need' (WIN) periods, where students can receive supplemental instruction in core areas, extensions of learning or intense intervention instruction, according to each student's needs.

According to the district, WIN class assignments may change throughout the year, and placement will be based on either established plans, or data obtained by standardized tests or common formative assessment.

'It really is an all-hands-on-deck approach to serve the kids,' Knutson said. 'In those WIN periods, there will be several things going on .. there isn't the pressure of grades, it's really about providing academic support for kids.'

Filling out the rest of the student's schedules will be core classes, including math, literacy, social studies and science, and two flex periods. The flex periods will function on an A-B structure, where classes are held on alternating days, and students choose between full-academic-year classes such as PE, band, chorus and orchestra, and semester-long classes like music, FCS, art and tech.

Some flex period classes, such as PE, will be required, while other periods provide opportunity for students to choose the courses they would like to attend.

A noticeable absence from the master schedule is study hall, which will not be available for seventh or eighth-grade students. Sixth-grade students will be allowed one study hall period, if not involved in band, orchestra or chorus. This change, Michael said, was made to reduce time spent in non-instructional time.

'In eighth-grade, we have 60 percent of our students that have at least two study halls. That's 82 minutes of instructional time,' he said. 'Some kids, maybe, use it the way it should be used, but I can tell you .. I'm not confident that's the case.'

He said the new seven, 53-minute-period structure will allow teachers to use class time more productively, decreasing the amount of homework that needs to be done each day outside of class. He hopes this will help create balance without needing study hall.

'We understand, after being in school for six-and-a-half to seven hours, it gets exhausting to have to go home and still do more work. Those are philosophical discussions that are taking place,' he said. 'There are certain subject areas where there will be homework .. but it's using that independent time within the classroom structure to be able to not only get that support from the teacher, but hopefully get a lot of that homework done as well.'

Michael said there are still some changes that will be made, but the district is looking forward to seeing how the new schedule will benefit middle school students.

'We are still kind of going through this. We are not 100 percent finished, but we're about 90 percent there, and we're confident that we will have a schedule that will be operationalized probably in the next month or so.'

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Master Schedule Overview

The product master schedule contains definitions and dates for every milestone of the project as well as the requirements for all the

deliverables pertaining to the project. Inside the project master schedule is the allocation of the time required to achieve every objective and the documentation and illustration of the relationships between all activities.

An effective master schedule derives its information from the master project plan and detailed work schedules. Because the soundness of the master schedule depends on the quality and accuracy of its underlying components, project managers must take steps to ensure their preparation with the highest possible degree of precision.

Creating the master schedule is a bottom-up process that takes the results from two major planning initiatives to coordinate all the activities and objectives of a project to establish a realistic and firm completion date for the project.

Building A Master School Schedule Free

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Most.Supreme.Being

Components of the Master Schedule

The master schedule depends on the adequate construction of the master project plan and the detailed work schedules for the project to enable it to accurately determine the accurate time each milestone will be completed and each deliverable will be produced. Here you will find an overview of the project master plan and detailed work schedules.

Master Project Plan

Formulation of a reliable and accurate master schedule cannot begin until a master project plan is in place. The project master plan is primarily intended for the project team and includes:

• Project scope and work statement.
• Project organization, resources, and training requirements.
• Technical details of every significant project activity. This includes the work breakdown structure (WBS) that is essential for the formulation of the detailed work schedules required by the project master schedule.

Once the master plan for the project is in place, it forms one of the two fundamental bases for the creation of the master schedule.

Detailed Work Schedules

The creation of the master project schedule is a process that is formed from the bottom up. That means that the work schedules from each team member and element must be defined before they can be included in the master schedule. This also means that the those who will actually do the work should be involved in estimating the schedule for each task. This not only improves the accuracy of the master schedule as a whole, but it helps to assure the support of every member of the team.

A detailed schedule should be formulated for virtually every task and activity included in the project and should include accurate estimates of the duration and risk of each item. PERT charts should be used for each stable item, and high risk entries should be considered by their worst case durations.

The accurate development of detailed work schedules forms the second leg of a sound foundation for the master schedule.

Bringing it all Together

After the master project plan and each detailed work schedule is complete, the master schedule for a project starts to take shape. In its final form, it should include a listing of all activities at every level within the project, together with the interrelationships of activities defined in relation to all of the milestones and deliverables of the project.

Because the master schedule is rigid once completed, steps should be taken to ensure that adequate padding for durations is included in the underlying schedules.

Now that you understand the major components of a project schedule, read more about how to create one here.

References

Microsoft. 'Process 4: Create the Master Schedule', https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc543353.aspx