Extended Day

At my school, the scheduled specialists (art, music, library, PE, computer) are assigned to a class at the end of the day for 30 minutes of "extended day" special.  I lobbied to have the same class at the end of the day that I saw earlier in the day so I could actually "extend" their learning.  It has been working out GREAT for us in the library, and I LOVE IT!

Unfortunately, the other specialists do not love it.  I can imagine that it would be hard to teach PE in the classroom (since they don't have enough time to pick up the kids, take them to the PE room, and return them before dismissal).  But I bring my classes back to the library, and those 30 minutes are priceless! We have used them all so well--I am easily able to extend whatever our lesson was that day for the class, and I manage to make it a little fun, too.

Yesterday, for instance, we were reading this VRC book called Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature. With this extended class, we drew lots of spirals on our scratch paper and watched a great video about Fibonacci numbers and how to make swirls with them.  It was way harder than it looked on the video (isn't it always!!), but the kids loved it.  It was something they'd never heard of before.  That is the beauty of extended day!

I love the extra time with the kids, even though the other specialists don't.  Sure, it's one more class to prep for, but in the library, it's not a chore at all.  There's always stuff to learn!