Scheduling Students for Accelerated Instruction

Accelerated instruction requires that any students in grades 3-12 who did not score at least Approaches on their STARR assessment or End of Course (EOC) exam receive intervention support in groups of up to 3. However, with parent approval some schools may receive a waiver and that number can be higher.

Within Enriching Students, a user can schedule a single student for intervention, or create a group to schedule. First, let’s talk about how to set up an intervention course for Accelerated Instruction that students would be scheduled into.

First, a teacher could create a special course offering for “accelerated instruction”. To do this they would log in to their Enriching Students account and go to the Course page tab. In the Staffer’s Course box the teacher could create a custom or adjusted course offering for accelerated instruction by editing the information in this box. We recommend that users add ‘AI’ to their course name, and add a description that would reflect that this is specifically for accelerated instruction, so that other users will know the purpose of this course.

Some schools may only allow teachers and tutors to meet with groups of 3 students or less. With ‘AI’ in the name and/or description, other teachers will know the purpose of this teacher’s course, and will know not to schedule students to the teacher. The teacher creating the course will be the one scheduling students to see them, and this way they can ensure that no more than 3 students can see them, or the number that their school has decided on.

Additionally, by checking the ‘block self-scheduling’ and ‘prevent student requests’ checkbox, students will not have permission to schedule themselves into this course.

The teacher can then add the other course information, such as the period this will occur during, and the type of appointment, the appointment type could serve as another identifier to this appointment being Accelerated Instruction. An Enriching Students Admin user can create custom appointment types for your school. Learn more about this feature in our Appointment Types video.

To finish setting up the appointment on the schedule details page, the teacher would select the day or days they will be holding this session. In addition, the teacher could add a Zoom or Google Meet link if this session will be occurring virtually.

Get an idea of what setting this up would look like in the image below.

*Note – Though the Max Seat count displays as 20 in this example, students cannot self schedule and the teacher would simply only schedule the # of students that is appropriate (3 or the school standard). On another Flex day the same teacher may then take up to 20 students.

Once the course is set up, click ‘Save’, and you will see this course listed in the ‘Adjusted Courses’ box. Now it’s time to schedule students!

*Please note: When you are creating courses for AI, be very careful when deleting them. When you delete an adjusted course in Enriching Students, it will remove any appointments that had been scheduled to that course, as well as the attendance record associated with the adjusted course. Especially in schools using AI, historical data is important. So use caution when deleting, and to make sure that all teachers in your school understand this point as well, to avoid losing data.

To schedule one student into the Accelerated Instruction intervention course, a teacher would go to the Scheduling page in Enriching Students.

To find the student they are looking for, the teacher can use the search bar to search for the student by using two or more characters in their name, or use the dropdown next to the search bar to sort by roster, such as Homeroom.

A quick note — the date a teacher is selecting to schedule the student must coincide with the day the AI course is occurring.  That is the day the teacher selected when setting up their AI adjusted course on the Course page. In this example the adjusted course was created for September 6th, so the student would be scheduled for that course on the Scheduling page for that same date.

Once the correct date is found, there are two ways to schedule the student. One way is to select the down arrow next to the ‘Schedule’ button, as you see in the image below. This will quickly schedule the student.

The next method, if a teacher wants to add more details to this student’s AI appointment, is to select the ‘Schedule’ button. This will take the teacher to a more detailed scheduling page, like you see below. The teacher would select their department, which will be automatically selected when they load this page, and the AI course they created.

They can add additional details, and also select the ‘Appt Locked’ checkbox, which will ‘lock’ the appointment, preventing other teachers from scheduling students into it. After adding the appointment type, as well as the date or dates this will be occurring on, the teacher would select ‘Save.’

*A note about appointment types: these can be setup by an individual school. Your school may consider creating custom appointment types that show the appointment is for AI, as well as a time period, for example AI (10 min). This will allow you to track AI minutes over time. Read about this process here.

Now this appointment will display on the Scheduling page. The teacher could also select the email icon next to the students name to send them a copy of the schedule, as you can see circled in the image below. Not a fan of more emails? We recommend students log in to their Enriching Students account in a web browser to view their schedule, or they can log in and see it on the Enriching Students Student Mobile App on their phone.

Next up, how can you create and schedule a group of students?

Many schools may identify student needs and want to create groups based on these needs. Within Enriching Students, any user has the ability to create a group of students. Specifically, if a subject matter teacher is assigned a group of students needing intervention in their subject matter course, they may want to schedule these students as a group, instead of one by one.

A teacher could create a group of 3, if this is the requirement in their school. Or, if they have received a waiver with parental permission, under HB 4545 they could schedule more than 3 students.

Regardless of the number of students, here’s how to create and schedule a group.

In Enriching Students, the term ‘roster’ is used when referring to student groups. Teachers are usually assigned rosters that are uploaded at the beginning of the school year. But, a teacher can create a custom roster by assigning students a ‘tag.’

Logged into their Enriching Students account, a teacher would go to the Students page. To see their rostered students, they would select the ‘Show my rostered students’ checkbox. This would display a box with all students currently tagged and in rosters, as well a ‘Students Not Assigned to Me’ box that enables them to add more students to their roster. See an example of what this page looks like in the image below.

First, the teacher would type the name of the ‘tag’ they want to give students. In the ‘Students Not Assigned to Me’ box, they would type where it says ‘Enter One Tag.’ For example, this could be ‘Language Arts AI.’

Next, to add students, the teacher would use the alphabet feature at the top of the page. They would select the letter that corresponds to the first letter of the students’ last name. For example, to find student Olivia LaMontagne, they would select ‘L’.

Once the letter is selected, a list of students would appear in the ‘Students Not Assigned to Me’ box. To add the tag to the student and begin to create a group, they would click the checkbox next to the student’s name. The student would now be visible in the ‘Students Assigned To Me’ box. See an example of creating the tag in the first image below, and then the tagged students in the ‘Students Assigned to Me’ box in the second image.

To create the group, a teacher would find each student by selecting the first letter of their last name in the alphabet, and then checking the box next to their name in the ‘Students Not Assigned to Me’ box.

If a student is already assigned to another of the teacher’s roster groups, they will not be able to find the student by using the alphabet search feature. The teacher would see them in the ‘Students Assigned to Me’ box, with the student’s current tags. To add them to this AI group, a teacher would simply copy and paste the AI tag name into the space beside the students name. For example, in the image above the student Lynn Grant has a ‘Remote Thursday’ tag. Next to that tag name is a blank label. A teacher could type, or copy and paste ‘Language Arts AI’ into this label and hit ‘Enter’ on their keyboard to add her to the group.

To see this feature in action, watch the video Building Your Roster

For schools that want to create Accelerated Learning groups of students and assign them to teachers ahead of time, an Admin user could create and upload a roster file that would assign students to teachers, all at once. Admins can learn about this process in the video Import Rosters.

Next, find out how to schedule the group!

Once the accelerated learning group has been created, a teacher can go to the Scheduling page, just like they would to schedule a single student. Instead of searching for a single student though, now they want to schedule an entire group.

When students are ‘tagged’, or grouped, teachers can use a filter on this page to find them. At the top of the Scheduling page there is a dropdown to the right of the search bar that contains all of a teachers tags, or roster groups. In this dropdown, the teacher would find the tag they just created on the Students page. See the dropdown in the image below.

By selecting that tag, all students tagged in that group will now show on the Scheduling page.

As with scheduling a single student, to schedule the group for the AI session that was created, they need to be scheduled on the day it’s occurring. And also, as with scheduling a single student, there are two ways to schedule.

First, the teacher should be sure to navigate to the correct date. Next, to schedule all students at once, they would select the ‘+’, expand icon, at the top left of the schedule next to the word ‘Students’.

The teacher could schedule the group by selecting the dropdown arrow next to the Schedule button and choosing the AI course, or, can again have more details and options by selecting the ‘Schedule’ button. The rest of the process is the same as it is for scheduling a single student. See an example of selecting the dropdown arrow to quickly schedule a student in the image below.

Once the students are scheduled, a teacher will see the whole group listed with appointments on the day they scheduled them. They could email the student group their schedule by selecting the mail icon next to their names, or again, the student could log in on the Enriching Students mobile app or a web browser to view their schedule at any time.

Of course, the group doesn’t necessarily need to be scheduled all at once, but this would likely save time. If a teacher wants to schedule each student in the group with perhaps a different appointment type, or different schedule comment, they could select the Schedule button for each student individually to schedule them.

When students are scheduled for accelerated instruction, it’s required that they have 30 hours of AI for the subject matter they are struggling in. How can teachers keep track of this time? Check out our post Tracking Accelerated Instruction, to learn more. To learn more about strategies for meeting HB 4545 requirements, go to our guide.

And to learn more about how Enriching Students can help with HB 4545, or another intervention and enrichment program, Schedule a Demo today!