Breaks during Blocks by: Lauren Chi

Every school has different ways to schedule their classes. Some do one and a half hour classes, but only four classes a day. Some do forty-five-minute classes, and all of the classes every day. My school has an hour and twenty-minute classes, but four classes a day and sometimes it is hard to stay completely focused the whole class. Some of my teachers notice that the students start to lose focus throughout the class. Of the teachers that notice, they all have different ways of giving them a break.

One of my teachers will give a lecture and then give us either independent time for a couple of minutes or will have us do individual work but let us put our earbuds in and listen to our own music. He also plays some very soft, and calm music in the classroom and makes the classroom very relaxing. This is one of my favorite classes, not only because it has a calm feeling to it, but because I feel like my teacher really understands us students and how stressful it is to try and keep up with all our work. He tries to keep our amount of work down and allows us to relax more than the rest of our classes.

Another one of my teachers gives us a five- minute break every class between lectures. She notices that by the end of the day, students start to not focus because they want to go home. So, what she does is gives us a five-minute break to stand up, stretch, use the restroom if needed, or go on our phones. After the five minutes, we sit down at our desks and refocus. She tries to maximize our class time and still can give us a break because she would rather waste five minutes but have a very productive rest of class than have us sit for the whole class and all of us doze off and not pay attention.

In conclusion, I think it helps students learn more to give them a few minutes to rest and relax then to keep teaching and have them not learn and be productive.