Episode 420: It's Not About How Much Time You Have — It's About What You Do With It

In today's Teaching Middle School ELA Podcast episode, I stopped blaming short periods and long blocks and show how a simple daily framework makes any middle school ELA schedule feel doable. I explained why predictable starts and calm endings beat cramming every ELA skill into every day, then shared sample pacing moves for 50, 75, and 90 minutes.

• reframing the “not enough time” problem as a missing structure
• building a three-part class period with strong bookends
• using daily bell ringers to protect instructional minutes
• closing with independent reading to reduce chaos and build culture
• creating a weekly cadence instead of teaching everything daily
• sample breakdowns for 45 to 50, 60 to 75, and 90-minute blocks
• a five-minute planning prompt to define how the class should feel

So definitely come to my free workshop. Make sure that you grab your free spot at ebteacher.com/workshop

Transcript

Why Time Always Feels Short

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Well, hello teachers, and welcome back to another episode. Today we are going to talk about it's not about how much time you have, it is about what you do with it because this is one of the consistent pieces of feedback that I get from teachers all the time when I ask them, what is your biggest challenge when it comes to teaching middle school ELA? And the answer is time. I never have enough time. So I want to set a scene with you, and then we're gonna get into the episode. So tell me if this sounds familiar. Your mid-lesson, your students are engaged, like actually engaged, you're in the group, and then boom, the bell rings and you haven't finished, and you're like, no, no, no, no, no. And you have to do that awkward thing where you try to wrap up a lesson that wasn't finished at all, and your students are already like walking outdoor. Or you flip that, maybe you have a long period, you have a 90-minute block, and by the 60-minute mark, it's like everyone's done. Students are restless, you're restless, you're like, oh my God, I still have 30 minutes left to go. I remember feeling that way when I taught high school because we had a block schedule every other day. I saw my students for 90 minutes. So here's what I want to offer you today. The length of your class period is not the problem. The absence of a clear framework for how that time is structured, that's the problem. And what's cool about that is if that's the problem, that's totally solvable. Because the length of the class period, we can't do anything about. That's district mandated or whoever is in charge, the people above us, the man is what my mom used to say when I was a little kid. The man is looking. I don't know what that did to me psychologically, actually, as I say that out loud. But this is a solvable problem, right? Because if it's all about a framework and having your time structured, then we can fix that.

More Minutes Without A Plan

SPEAKER_00 1:36

So I want to start with a reframe as we dive into this episode. So most teachers that I talk to, and perhaps this is you, and it's okay if it's you, like raise your hand, say yes, because that's where we start to solve and fix problems, is by having the awareness of it first, is that most teachers believe that if they just had more time, if I just had more time, everything would fall into place. But like I said, I've taught at schools where I had 90-minute class periods, and I've also taught at schools where I've had very short class periods, 45 minutes or 50-minute class periods. And the thing that I noticed as I look back on those experiences is that the stress levels that I had were never determined by the length of the class period. It was determined by whether or not I had a clear plan for exactly how I was gonna move through that time as a teacher. So more time without a framework just gave me more time to feel overwhelmed and be like, what am I doing? Or how am I gonna get to all of this or all of this stuff, right? And here's the other belief that I want to challenge as well: that a complete ELA class period, a lot of us believe, has to cover everything: grammar, vocabulary, reading, and writing every single day. But it doesn't. A lot of the times it can't. And so trying to force that is exactly one of those things that creates that rushed, chaotic, nothing gets done well feeling of overwhelm that so many of us are experiencing. So, what I want to actually talk about is a framework for how we can fix this problem.

The Three-Part Class Framework

SPEAKER_00 3:03

So, here's all you need to know. Biggest takeaway is every class period, no matter how long, is essentially going to have three parts. What students do when they walk in the door, what students do when they walk out the door, and then what happens in between. The most important thing I want you to pay attention to is the beginning and the end. Everything in the middle is a whole hell of a lot easier from there. The beginning and the end are the things that we kind of forget because we're so focused on that middle piece, the things that we actually have to teach. But how often do we have an actual framework for exactly what students do when they walk in the door and it is the same every freaking day? And what students do when they walk out the door and the same exact thing, it's the same freaking thing every single day. Those two bookends of your class period are, I would argue, more integral than what happens in the middle and the actual content of what you're teaching. Because if you don't have those two things dialed in, sorry to get aggressive, but this is Coach Caitlin coming out. If you don't have those two things dialed in, it doesn't matter what you're teaching in between because it ain't gonna happen the way that you anticipate it happening if you don't have these bookends structured properly. So I want to give you some ideas for what you can do and how I structured my class period. And if you were not doing this, I highly, highly suggest I'm almost gonna mandate if you're gonna listen to the podcast, you gotta do this next school year. That's how strongly I feel about it.

Bell Ringers As A Nonnegotiable Start

SPEAKER_00 4:29

The beginning of your class period, you are going to start with bell ringers every single day. Standards align, independent, no reminders needed, no reteaching. If students are wandering and settling in for the first eight minutes of a 45-minute class period, you have lost almost 20% of your instructional time before you've even started class. That is a like, think about that. Not just 20% of your day, of that specific day, but 20% of all of your instructional class time throughout the school year, if that happens every single day. And if you are an EB teacher who is a pro-tier member, we have brand new bell ringers coming out at back to school time that are a part of our back to school resource drop. They are going to be so helpful for implementing this effectively. So you need a solid bell ringer routine that is going to fix this problem, period. It's like it's not even up for debate. It's not even a discussion at this point. And it's so important to also put the instructions on your board of what you want students to do when they walk in, even if they've done it for the first two months of school. You keep those instructions up on the board every time they walk in because you don't have to answer questions. And what I would do is when students would ask me a question, I would just smile and point to the board. I'm not even gonna have a discussion with you because the instructions are up there. So I literally would not even talk to my students and call me whatever you want to call me for doing that. But it worked. And my students know I love them, right? Like there's this ability to be warm and kind and caring, but also structured and um what's the word I'm looking for? Like this is how we do it, right? I don't know what the word is. Maybe you guys are filling it in as you're listening and you're like screaming at your podcast right now. Caitlin, this is the word. I don't know what it is, but you get what I'm saying. So bell ringers, non-negotiable. Okay, the second thing that's what students do when they walk

Ending With Calm Independent Reading

SPEAKER_00 6:20

in the door. Now, what students do when they walk out the door is just as important. I always ended my class period with independent reading, even if it's just five minutes. What it does is it builds a culture in your classroom that says that reading is important. I always told my students, if you don't do anything else, just read. Like you don't even have to don't, I don't care if you know vocabulary words or grammar or whatever. If you just read, I'll be thrilled. But that's it. I don't even want you to do anything else. And I think that this is the part that teachers don't expect to change for them in their classroom, is that this practice completely changes how your class period closes. There's no more bell ringing while your mid-sentence and students are out the door and gone, and you're like, wait, this is due tomorrow, right? Instead, students are reading, the bell rings, you dismiss them, and because they're reading, there's no chaos when you dismiss them. It is calm and they exit and you're done. I mean, it is literally the most like nervous system resetting experience that you can bring into your classroom, which I would argue in today's day and age is more important than anything we can teach our students, is to help them have a regulated nervous system. And you too, quite frankly, as a teacher. Okay, now what happens in between?

Stop Teaching Everything Every Day

SPEAKER_00 7:40

So, this is important that I want you to hear is we have to stop trying to cover everything every day. You want to pick two or three days for grammar every other week or every two, however you're instructor it based on your class period. You want to do writing on certain days, reading on certain days, vocabulary on Monday, maybe you have short daily reviews. I teach all about this in my workshop. So make sure that you sign up for it, ebteacher.com forward slash workshop, because it's hard for me to explain on podcast. Um, but when you can see it in practice, like on an actual screen of what I'm suggesting you do, it makes a huge difference. But what you'll notice is that you are building a cadence for your months and for your weeks. So it's the same thing every time. And that creates so much white space in our brains for our nervous systems to settle down and for us to not feel this overwhelmed, like frenetic energy in our beings.

Schedules For 45 75 And 90

SPEAKER_00 8:30

So I want to give you a class period breakdown really fast, and then we'll wrap up. Um, so we'll keep this really short. So let's say that you have a 45 to 50 minute class period. If this is the case, every freaking minute counts. Bell ringers in independent reading on their way out, and then you might want to split reading and writing across your week, and you're not trying to do everything every day. At EB, we teach that students write about what they read about. So I would suggest reading at the beginning of the week and your writing units towards the end of the week. I would not suggest doing a reading unit one month and a writing unit the next month. That is way too much downtime between those skills throughout the year that it, I think, creates this chasm between reading and writing that really, quite frankly, should be happening together. I know that there are reading teachers and writing teachers who teach those subjects separately. At EB, we do strongly believe that they should be taught simultaneously. Okay, that's a 40 to 50 minute class period. 60 to 75 minutes, you're gonna have the same framework, but you have a little bit more breathing room. So you might want to give your students a little bit more time on the bell ringer, or what I like to do is give them longer independent reading time. So I would give them 10 or 15 minutes at the end of class so that way you can move naturally from your reading or your writing lesson in the same period. And that's where that integration of that magic happens, right? So you do bell ringers and then you do your reading lesson, then you do your writing lesson, and then you read at the end of class. And that is a really magical way to have your class period flow if you're able to. All right, so if we have 90 minutes, we have to stop thinking of it as 90 minutes. We want to think about it as different experiences, right? And so I chose to break up my class on like a 40, 10, 40 minute basis. So I would do something for 40 minutes and uh bell ringers, and then my reading unit, we would take a 10-minute break, like literally a 10-minute break. We I would do, I would teach like yoga to my students, even though I know nothing about yoga. I would still do yoga with them. We'd walk around the campus together, we'd just talk and hang out. I gave them a full 10-minute break experience. Then we'd come back to class, we'd move into our writing unit, and then we would do independent reading to close. And that transition just resets the energy in the room. And so you don't have to hit this wall at 60 minutes or 75 minutes every single time and be like, oh my God, how am I gonna make it to the last 90 minutes, you know, last 15, 20 minutes of class? It's really a remarkable way to structure your class period. So, based on my own personal experience, that is exactly how I would structure it if I had a 90-minute class. All right, I feel like I talked really fast today, but that's okay.

One Action Step And Free Workshop

SPEAKER_00 11:07

Before we close, I want to give you one action step. I want you to take five minutes this week, even though it's June. I don't care, we're gonna do it. We're gonna take five minutes this week, and I want you to write down what you want your class period to look like and feel like this coming school year. Not necessarily what it looks like now, but what you want it to look like. You're future pacing yourself, right? Students walk in and they're getting to work. A lesson that you're genuinely excited about is about to happen. The ending of the period feels like calm and nervous system regulating, whatever it might be. That vision that you write down, that is your target. And the framework that we talked about today is how you hit that target. You got to know what students do when they walk in the door, what do they do when they walk out the door, and what happens in between. It really can be that simple with our framework. And I want to help you fill in this framework with lessons that genuinely engage your students and get them mastering the standards. So definitely come to my free workshop. We're gonna talk all about my three proven steps to finally engage your students and get them mastering the standards, which I know is two of the biggest things or two of the biggest things that teachers struggle with. So make sure that you grab your free spot at ebteacher.com forward slash workshop. I will also link this in the show notes for you. All right, you guys, I hope this episode was helpful and that you now kind of have an understanding of how simple, not easy, like we talked about on the Monday mindset episode, this can be when we just have that clear structure of exactly how it goes every single day in our class period without question. All right, you guys, I will see you in the next episode. Bye, everyone.