School balancing time better

Ken Johnston

With some new flooring and sidewalks at Riverview School in Rainy River also came a new school day schedule this year.
The Balanced School Day saw what has virtually remained the same for about 30 years totally restructured. Principal Bob Derkson said the idea is to reduce the number of interruptions during instruction.
The new Balanced Day is set up in three 100 minute teaching times. After the first 100 minutes, which run from 8:45 a.m. to 10:25 a.m. students get a 45 minute break, which is broken down into two parts. One for nutrition and the other for activity. On this break the kids that live in town that used to go home for lunch between 12 and 12:50 p.m. also get to go home at 10:25 if they want to.
At 11:10 it is back to class until 12:50 when another 45 minute break takes place; again the town kids can go home.
After that it is another 100 minutes of class time until the end of the day at 3:15 p.m. Derkson said, “There have been significant gains in student progress where this system has been used.”
The Balanced School Day is not new to Ontario. In fact it has been implemented in other parts of the province for some time now. Last year Bergland students were first to get exposed to it in this end of the district, and while it is not mandatory for elementary schools in the district, Derkson said that many are looking at the benefits and choosing to put it in place. “We saw significant gains at McCrosson last year.”
Schools are required to do a minimum of 60 minutes of literacy instruction per day. “Now teachers
can do that uninterrupted,” said Derkson.
Interruptions, especially for smaller kids, like getting ready for recess and coming in from recess often saw teaching times lost and the flow broken.
Derkson said that he read about this system a couple of years ago and after careful consideration and consultations with parents and teachers, he decided to implement it. 86% of parents surveyed were in favour of it and 100% of teachers,” he said.
“This new system works particularly well in split grades,” said Derkson. The instructional time is the same, it is just bundled differently now.