Scheduling lunches/overlapping periods

Elizabeth Acquadro

We have two lunch periods which meet during our period 3. We have split up period 3 as 3A, 3B and 3C. Some students have lunch during period 3A and then class during B/C. Some students have class during 3AB and then lunch during 3C. 


We also have a rotating schedule so this is not the same each day in the cycle, so the lunch period and class combination that a student has is not always the same. Any ideas as to how to set this up? 


 

Elaine Mouton

Elizabeth,

I would be interested to know how others are handling this as well.  We recently switched to two lunches and have a similar scenario.  We have the period/block 3 set for a longer time period to accommodate class and lunch time.  We then have every class coded with either an A or a B to indicate what lunch that class is tied to.  (e.g. English 1-A) In order to try to assign students to a lunch with their peers, we assigned A or B according to grade level, with classes for grades 9 and 10 getting B and 11 and 12 getting A.  Some classes are open to all grade levels and for those we just made a judgement call on which to assign.  This has worked out okay for us, but I feel certain that there is a better way.  

I look forward to hearing how other schools manage having two lunch periods.

Elaine

Angela Kunz

We are converting from Education Edge where I was used to using a pattern assigned to a course and then leaving and area blank in 3rd period that would be for their lunches.  My Jr/Sr courses have one lunch period and Fr/So have another.  Some courses can have 10, 11, 12 th graders in them so we split them in half so as not to overwhelm the Student Commons.  What we are planning on doing is setting up multiple times and blocs for each  pattern that we had in EE.  Then for the course record we will be only assigning the course to the correct blocks.  For example Green Jr/Sr or Green Fr/So.   I am hoping it will work.  

Elizabeth Acquadro

I was searching here and found my question that I actually have the answer to now.

Each class is scheduled to a block. The meeting times during the lunch time (for us period 3) are labeled as L1, Block (A, B, C,D, etc) and L2. All students are in a class during the middle block time and one of the lunches, leaving lunch block free. In this way, all classes can get scheduled and then the additional meeting time can be added based on which lunch the students will have that day. Our lunch scheduling is based on the class sizes that meet during that time so the lunches are even in size. A meeting time report of free time for students allows you to search for the students who are free and then import their information to schedule them in the appropriate lunch.

There is a bit of manual labor as each class you run for each quarter needs to be manually set up with a meeting time, but it ensures the reporting is accurate and that the schedules appear how they if when you print them.