On Thursday evening, Feb. 29, Cider Mill School administrators gave the Board of Education a first glimpse of the new schedule for third, fourth and fifth graders that they have proposed to put into effect next school year.
School officials believe the new schedule — which would lengthen most periods to a full hour — will reduce transitional stress for students and make classroom management easier for teachers. They argue that, while it decreases time for — and will modify the execution of — world language instruction, it offers longer lunch and recess periods, will result in additional art and physical education time, and will lengthen both math and language arts periods.
“We’ve had feedback from the teachers saying science and social studies doesn’t need to be an hour long,” said Cider Mill Assistant Principal David Dudics, who led a presentation alongside CM Principal Jennifer Falcone.
“World language is getting embedded into science and social studies,” he said.
Consequently, the adjacent math block can be extended for a resultant 80-minute math period. The schedule change would also put reading and writing back to back, creating a single 120-minute language arts block.
World language, which currently meets for 100 minutes a week, would be reduced to 75 minutes a week, according to Dudics, though Chuck Smith, Wilton’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, stated, “It’s actually going to be more than 75 minutes.”
Smith described how, using science and social studies as a jumping-off point for thematic units to be developed by the world language teachers, students would be taught with a “content-based language program.”
“Rather than teaching a language in isolation … the language comes from the grade-level curriculum,” Smith said, although he acknowledged that concerns had been expressed by some people about the reduction in time.
“I think we just need to be careful about oversimplifying instructional time,” he said. “It’s not just the amount of time, but it’s about how it’s distributed and how it’s used.”
“I’d much rather see daily short exposure to the language than rather have every other day a long period of time,” he said, noting it encourages a quicker, more focused interaction with the language.
“The pace needs to be quick … You don’t want to think too much about it,” he said.
School officials emphasized that longer subject periods didn’t mean it would be straight lecture-style instruction.
“I would say traditionally in elementary school, teachers are trained to keep kids moving,” Falcone said, noting movement and “mind breaks” are incorporated into the day.
“It actually works out better for our students to have their language program brought into the classroom,” she said, rather than have students move throughout the building to other classrooms for world language instruction.
Dudic maintained that transitional times were wasteful, describing 30 hours of lost time each year due to transitions.
“That equates to …10 minutes of time lost a day … We need to diminish that in order to help their social and emotional needs,” he said.
Smith, too, cited social and emotional wellness as reasons to make the schedule change.
“We believe there are just too many transitions (for) kids of this developmental stage,” he said.
Dudics echoed Smith’s thoughts.
“We do think that by slowing the pace down, it’s going to help our students … not feel so rushed, not feel so anxious about what’s coming next,” he said.
Resident Michelle Martinez expressed her concern about any reduction of time spent on world language, as well as the process of communication from the school district around the proposed change.
“This change seems substantial and it’s unclear whether this is a proposal or already planned … I feel that the administration has intentionally obfuscated and diminished these changes,” she said.
She questioned what research was being used, as well as how the language teachers felt about it. She also called out some Cider Mill staff members for what she said was a misrepresentative comparison with other school districts.
“Although other school districts may have less time per day for foreign language, all of those programs begin in kindergarten, therefore it’s not a comparable comparison,” she said.
Cider Mill currently operates on a four-day schedule from Tuesday through Friday, with Monday rotating each week.
Dudic said it was confusing, even to the teachers and parents.
“Right now, if the adults at Cider Mill are having a difficult time keeping track of the days, I can’t imagine how the kids are,” he said.
With the new rotation, he said both P.E. and art would go from about 200 minutes every four weeks to 300 minutes.
Lunch and recess, each currently 20 minutes, will both be expanded to 30 minutes apiece.
“We need this additional time for them,” Dudic said, both for eating and becoming engaged in what he called “high-quality recess.”
A follow-up meeting with the school’s scheduling committee and administrators is planned for Monday, March 4.
“Next year we’re going to be monitoring throughout the fall, throughout the winter, throughout the spring … If we need to make shifts and adjustments, yeah, let’s do it,” Dudic said.
BOE Chair Ruth DeLuca called it “a very thoughtful presentation (with) a lot to digest and take in.”
“The conversation to continue,” she said.
The presentation made on Thursday night is available online.
The basic goals here – reduce transitions, eliminate the confusing alternating day, and consolidate ELA to a single block – seem like good and sensible ones. I think a 2 hour ELA block should be fine – teachers can select an appropriate ratio of word study / reading / writing / break time based on their class’s needs that day – but making 80 minutes of math work will be a challenge; I think they really need to double-down on individualized instruction there, the 1/3 of each class for which math is a headache-inducing struggle and the 1/3 of each class that are bored out of their minds during math are both likely to be bouncing off the walls after an hour if they’re all working on the same stuff. I’m also a little worried about music as an hourlong special, so I hope they support the music faculty in finding a way to use that extra time without having the kids go stir-crazy.
For science and social studies, I think they’re quite correct that as presently constituted they don’t need an hour a day for those things, but I regret that we don’t have the budget for dedicated teachers who might be able to do more with those subjects; New Canaan has 3 science teachers across their 3 elementary schools – enough to staff science as a proper special like art – while MD and CM share just 1. (and our enrollment is 10% higher, since NC’s larger population is offset by the fact that their 5th graders attend middle school)
For world language, I share everyone’s skepticism of 15-minute periods, and the whole “content-based language program” thing feels like an empty concept. Mental transitions are as much of a problem as physical transitions, and expecting kids to jump into / out of world language mode for a 15 minute interval every day seems like a stretch; it’s the bite-sized Duolingo approach to language learning, your brain isn’t really getting into French/Spanish mode. (I’m also not clear how they plan to juggle French and Spanish here) Plus, unlike science and social studies, we do have a fully fleshed-out world language curriculum with its own teachers and classrooms, and reducing it to 15 minutes a day in the middle of social studies feels like a major demotion, setting it up to be scaled back to 2-3 of those sessions a week in the next round of budget cuts before it’s eventually discontinued altogether.
My ideal solution to this would be to hire an additional world language teacher and either give 2 of those 5 weekly science/SS blocks over to world language or give one science/SS and one special block to it. If that’s not possible, it seems like existing staffing would be sufficient to do 1 and a half blocks a week, with one of the aforementioned two blocks on alternating weeks.
I’d reiterate, though, that there’s a lot to like about this schedule plan – the only thing that seems like a serious, insurmountable flaw is world language, and I’m hopeful that they can find a way to fix that without having to discard all of their other fine work.