Schedule Set Question

Matt Voci

My school is preparing to shift to a new schedule that would run the following way:

Monday has 5 blocks
Tuesday has 5 blocks
Wednesday has 3 block
Thursday has 5 blocks
Friday has 5 blocks

Each block of time contains a letter A-G that cycles through in a consecutive manner.

E.g.

M: ABCDE
T: FGABC
W: DEF
Th: GABCD
F: EFGAB

Thus the next Monday would be CDEFG.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to how to best set up a schedule set or multiple schedule sets to support this schedule… other than to manually build every single day? Thank you, in advance for any help or suggestions!

Joshua Blice

@Matt Voci

Good morning. We have a 10 day rotation that cycles through but is every Wednesday only 3 blocks? That is the only tricky part that I could see happening with building a schedule set. Happy to help brainstorm though.

Michelle Blayney

@Matt Voci Our schedule is very similar - a ribbon schedule that runs A-G with fewer meeting times on Wednesdays. You will have to manually set up every block over the course of your terms. We are on semesters, so we have a 16- to 18-week schedule set for each semester. It doesn't take all that long to cycle through the pull-down menus and add the blocks to the rotation schedule. You can also roll over the schedule sets year-to-year. Happy to share a screen shot or PDF of what our schedule set/rotation look like.

Mary Cummings

@Michelle Blayney we are moving to something similiar an 8 day rotation. I would love to see what you are doing.

Mary Cummings

@Joshua Blice we are moving to something similiar an 8 day rotation. I would love to see what you are doing.

Joshua Blice

@Mary Cummings

Does your rotation just start over after Day 8?

Mary Cummings

@Joshua Blice It does but is not a true rotation since it rotates every other days between 2 sets of classes. I also have some other meeting times that do not rotate and then on Wednesdays our blocks have different start and start times.

Matt Voci

@Joshua Blice - Thank you for the reply! Yes, every Wednesday is only three blocks. The solution I am currently leaning on is to create a 5-block rotation for M-F, create the 7 days that will cycle through the rotation, cancel the last two blocks on Wednesday, and use the option “edit cycle” to force Thursday to its correct rotation. Building a year like this isn't horrible, just inefficient… and it runs into problems if we ever want to bump or skip days later.

Matt Voci

@Michelle Blayney - Thank you for taking the time to reply. I shared with Joshua a minute ago, that I have experimented with the following solution:

(1) create a 5-block rotation for M-F (different times for Wednesday
(2) create the 7 days that will cycle through the rotation,
(3) cancel the last two blocks on Wednesday, and
(4) use the option “edit cycle” to force Thursday to its correct rotation.

Building a year like this isn't horrible, just inefficient… and it runs into problems if we ever want to bump or skip days later. Additionally, it means I am only manipulating 2 days/week instead of 5.

Though I am not overly happy about the extra work in making the schedule work, I am glad to hear that I was not overlooking a simple solution! I appreciate the response.

Joshua Blice

@Mary Cummings

You should be able to build in a rotation and then build in times for the Wednesday times. I also have other things like Assemblies, Advisory, Lunch, that I build separately through activities. Does that help? my school email is jblice@emeryweiner.org if you want to chat or a zoom call.

Normally our schedule sees 6 periods a day but we have Blue/White days that have 4 periods.

Those are times 7, 8, 9, and 10. This helps me build those days into the rotation.

Joshua Blice

@Matt Voci

I assume you ignore holidays and the rotation continues on the next school day, correct?

I was gonna say you could look at how many days you have to complete an entire rotation but that may not be helpful because of Wednesdays only having a couple periods. I would say a 3 week rotation should work and then adjust as needed but not sure if that is feasible. The times are an easy adjustment on the Meeting times tab of your schedule outline.

Matt Voci

@Joshua Blice - Hi Joshua, thanks for your thoughts. You assume correctly, we do not plan on skipping weekends, holidays, etc. Given this, we do not have enough 5-day weeks where patterns begin to emerge… which is unfortunate.