This is another instance of interruption by brief seatwork periods:
[The teacher] says that they will be talking about addition of decimals. He says that this is not really much different than adding whole num- bers. The teacher has Johnny write the first problem out for him. He says to him, “Tell me what to put down.” Johnny adds three and two and says that it’s five. Then he adds six and nine and says that it’s 15; put down the five and carry the one. The teacher then asks him, “Where do I put the one? Down here?” Johnny says, “No, you put the one over the eight.” Then he adds the eight and gets nine. He tells him to put the decimal between the nine and the five. When he’s through, the teacher says, “Very good.” The teacher then starts asking them review questions on decimals. As he asks questions, he reminds stu- dents to “Raise your hands and tell me what place the decimal is in.” The teacher calls on Gracie to do the second example on the board. She declines, and then the teacher goes on to call on Edward. Edward works through the problem and then says, “Tell me what’s wrong.” The teacher says to him, “Well, let’s find out. How can we tell?” The stu- dents call out that they can subtract to check. At 9:28 the teacher puts up a third example. He tells the class that they’ll be doing the assign- ment on their papers, and that they should go ahead and do number three to see if they can get it right. The teacher starts walking around checking to see if students are getting the problem right. There’s some quiet talking in the room and the teacher is still walking around. At 9:41 the teacher says, “Let’s look up here.” (He works the problem on the board. After that, he assigns them another problem to do at their seats and walks around checking them.) (Evertson, 1982, p. 182)
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Teacher F copes with the problem of sustaining seatwork in his lower-per- forming classes by incorporating some of the seatwork into the lecture (or in- troduction to seatwork) in very brief segments, placing the responsibility for maintaining lesson continuity with the students for only a very brief period of time. The advantages of this format appear clear. First, a brief seatwork ac- tivity is more likely to have a high task orientation than an extended activity. Surrounding seatwork periods with lecture allows the more easily maintained lesson continuity of the lecture to help support seatwork. Second, these brief seatwork activities incorporated into the lecture enable the teacher to provide more immediate feedback than extended seatwork activities. The teacher can thus modify explanations during the lecture if necessary rather than interrupt a long seatwork activity, as frequently happens in lower-performing classes.
In summary, the lower-performing class of Teacher F presents an important contrast with Teacher B’s lower-performing class. Teacher B had a significantly longer seatwork period and shorter checking and lecture activities, possibly adding to her difficulties, inasmuch as seatwork is often a problematic activity in lower-performing classes. In contrast, Teacher F minimized this problem in his lower-performing class by reducing the length of independent seatwork activity, which contributed significantly to the higher task orientation of his class, as determined by observer ratings. The comparison suggests that long, extended seatwork activities are counterproductive, adding to management problems and minimizing good task orientation in low-performing classes.
Many middle and high school teachers have both high- and low-performing classes in their schedule. Are they able to make adjustments, as Teacher F above did, and pace classes differently for different groups? That is what we mean by pacing and rhythm. One can look to see if time is structured for certain individuals, as Teacher F did for a whole class. And the reasons for varying it certainly go beyond the global word ability. In the Evertson (1982) study, “abil- ity” really meant achievement on California Achievement Tests. There was a distinction between high- and low-performing classes. There are many reasons for high and low performance besides native ability, with its implication about intelligence. Very capable, but easily distracted, students may learn best when their pacing is regulated for short bursts of highly focused activities. Skillful teachers look to create such arrangements for those who need it, while the rest of the class may be paced quite differently.
Most secondary teachers who make the shift from the traditional seven-period day to block scheduling find themselves needing to re-examine how they pace and chunk the period to maintain student engagement. It is not a question of whether students can stay focused for 75 to 80 minutes but rather how the activities in the overall period are structured and balanced that counts. This
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might be length of time; balance of information input, processing, and output; opportunities for physical movement at least every half hour or so; and variety in interaction complexity (working alone, working interactively, participating in large group).