What is an ‘Activity Period‘?
Many schools have added an ‘activity period’ to their daily schedule schedule. What is it? An activity period is a flexible period of time during the school day, often used for enrichment activities, or extra help. But is there more you can do with an activity period? How can you manage this time?
Manage & Organize Your Activity Periods
If your school has a daily activity period, you know that sometimes things might get a little disorganized. One teacher may have just a few students seeing them, while one may have way more than their capacity. How can you keep track of where students are going? Are students really participating in meaningful activities? How can you ensure that students who really need help are seeing the teachers they need to?
If you’re a middle or high school teacher, it can especially be difficult to keep these periods organized and meaningful. Paper hall passes simply won’t cut it, and won’t hold students accountable. Enriching Students offers the ability for students and administrators to assign students where they need to go, override other appointments if it’s essential they see a student, take attendance, and more.
Give Students Personalized Learning Choices
With Enriching Students, staff members can make custom course offerings, for a single day or repeating dates. One teacher may use this to create time for AP study prep, one may offer guitar lessons, as an example. While struggling students may be better suited to see a teacher for extra help in subject, other students may want to pursue a creative project they may not have time for otherwise. Some schools have used this to implement a Genius Hour or STEM program with emphasis on project/problem based learning, or make their competency ed structure successful. There are so many possibilities!
In addition, the software makes it possible for schools to allow students to schedule themselves. This is a feature that can be turned on or off depending on the school, even by student. Allowing students this choice about how they’re going to use their time raises student voice, and can help students become more invested in their learning.
How can you successfully implement an activity period? Another term for this time is a ‘flex block.’ Watch our video ‘How Can You Create a Flex Block?‘ to see how schools have made minor adjustments to their schedule to make this work. In addition ‘Why Create a Flex Block?‘ gives examples of success from real schools that have a daily flex block, or activity period.
