Scheduling Students for Accelerated Instruction

Texas House Bill 1416 (an update to HB 4545) requires that any students in grades 3-8 who did not score at least Approaches on their STARR assessment or End of Course (EOC) exam receive intervention support, referred to as accelerated instruction. 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 Adjusted Offerings page. On this page, select the Create Adjusted Offering button to add a new offering during flex. A user would set up the dates and times this would occur, along with a name for the offering. We recommend that users add ‘AI’ to their offering 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 here.

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 Offerings’ 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 offering in Enriching Students, it will remove any appointments that had been scheduled to that course, as well as the attendance record associated with the offering. 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 Appointments 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 Adjusted Offerings page. In this example the adjusted offering was created for October 9th, so the student would be scheduled for that course on the Appointments 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 ‘Create Appointment’ button, as you see in the image below. This will quickly schedule the student to the AI course.

The next method, if a teacher wants to add more details to this student’s AI appointment, is to select the ‘Create Appointment’ button, and choose Advanced Appointments. 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, create recurring appointments over a range of dates, 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 Appointments 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.

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 1416 they could schedule more than 3 students.

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

Teachers are usually assigned rosters or student groups that are uploaded at the beginning of the school year. But, in Enriching Students® a teacher can also create a custom student group.

First, an admin or teacher would go to the Manage Student groups page. Next, they would select the Create Group button. On this page, they would type in a group name, possibly naming students they have assigned to them for AI. Then, they would search for and select the students to add to their group by checking the boxes next to their names. See an example of what this page looks like in the image below.

Once the accelerated learning group has been created, a teacher can go to the Appointments 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 Appointments page there is a dropdown to the left of the search bar that contains all of the teacher’s student groups. In this dropdown, the teacher would find the group they created on the Manage Student Groups page. See the dropdown in the image below.

By selecting that group, all students tagged in that group will now show on the Appointments 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 in the selected group at once, they would select the Group Actions button on the date they wish to schedule students, and then choose the AI course under My Courses.

Another option would be to select Mass Appointments, which would take the teacher to a page where they could set up more options, including choosing different dates and courses.

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 into their Enriching Students® account and a 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.

When students are scheduled for accelerated instruction, it’s required that they attend a certain number of hours 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 1416 requirements, go to our guide.

And to learn more about how Enriching Students® can help with HB 1416, or another intervention and enrichment program, Schedule a Demo today!