Developing a course schedule

Teachers who base their instruction on a concise and well-organized body of knowledge can structure their courses to ensure that all course content is covered within the time allotted by the school schedule. When I was in school, history teachers consistently ran out of time before they ran out of textbook, so we never learned about the last half century or so. The procedure described here allows me to cover all of the course content; a similar approach might work for you.

I sit down with a school calender at the beginning of the year and divide the 26 pages of the Student's Friend by the number of weeks available for the course. This tells me what percentage of Student's Friend page(s) I must cover on average per week. With this information I can determine deadlines for completing each unit of the course. I know that I must finish Unit X by Date Y if I hope to cover all the course material.

But, it's not quite that easy. The schedule must be adjusted to allocate extra time for anticipated activities such as:

• the usual preliminary paperwork and explanations at the beginning of the course,
• library research time for preparing research reports or multi-media presentations,
• a week-long Greek simulation during Part 1,
• state-mandated standardized testing,
• final exam activities at the end of the course.

Then, of course, there are the unscheduled interruptions to be dealt with, such as school assemblies, fire drills and school pictures which all cut into teaching time. Interesting class discussions sometimes run longer than expected. Anticipated activities coupled with unscheduled interruptions and delays will mean that a unit which might only require two weeks in theory will actually require two-and-a-half weeks or more in practice.

My high school operates on a 90-minute block schedule. In theory I try to cover two pages of the Student's Friend per week. Teachers operating on a standard 45-minute schedule should probably try to cover about one page per week. In reality, it will take longer, and the course schedule should include enough flex time to cope with this reality.

Examples of two course schedules are available below (based on a 90-minute block).

Schedule for World History & Geography, Part 1 (8 units) - pdf

Schedule for World History & Geography, Part 2 (7 units) - pdf