Why don't school have more double periods?

[Coolingfan]

I'm in Scotland - kids back at school.
DS has swimming for the first block of PE. Said they didn't get very long in the water due to having to get changed into/out of costumes and rush to next class.
Got me thinking - why don't schools make more use of double periods for practical classes- PE, science, home ec, technology etc. Instead of two 50 min lessons make it one 100 min lesson a week.
Seems logical to me - do your kids' schools use them, or is it a logistical hassle for them? Maybe it'll happen in the later years.

When I first started teaching (20 odd years ago), lots of schools' lessons were 35 or 40 mins long, so having a double was fine, and made sense for practical lessons. All the schools I know of now have 60 minute lessons. Double that would be too long imo. Plus I think it must be considerably harder to timetable a mixture of double and single lessons. I'm an MFL teacher and much preferred 4 or 5 35 min lessons a week - little and often is far better for languages!

I agree

My boys' secondary uses double periods for almost everything. I'm sure it's more efficient as well because there isn't the time wasted between single lessons going to different blocks/classrooms.

Have you ever taught a 100 minute lesson?

I teach science and have taught all lengths of lessons from 35 to 90 minute lessons. Students can not concentrate for much longer than 45 mins, even in a practical subject.

Yes, just seems more efficient to me.
I agree, single lessons for languages, maths, English make more sense in general.
I hated drama at school so would have dreaded a double period of that but you could achieve a lot more with the double period.

Fair enough Santi.
I'm thinking along the lines of setting up a chemistry experiment, writing the method, conducting the experiment, writing the result and then clearing up. It just sound a bit of a rush.
Same with home ec - the kids made really basic stuff as there wasn't time to follow a proper recipe.

Sorry, *sanity

Our high school had problems with this when my daughter was doing her GCSEs last year

She did food tech and art but only ever had single lessons of 50 minutes which meant they never really got long enough to do the practical stuff properly. Food tech was an issue especially when they did stuff like meringues and cooking a 3 course meal

The teachers had complained for years about it but it was just the way the timetabling and teacher availability worked out

Surely it all depends how long the lessons are!

Our secondary had double lessons for most things, I recall each lesson was 35 mins, but it means some things could therefore be 35 mins, like Tutor time.

I think it’s a concentration span thing. It makes sense for things like games/PE where you need to factor in time for equipment and changing but double lessons of back to back maths, English or languages for most secondary school aged children is just overkill. Humans (adults, children, teens) just don’t have the (untrained) focused attention span to sit and pay undivided attention to a task for 2 hours. As irritating as it may seem, that ‘timewasting’ walk between lessons gives a break and a chance to refresh. There have been a few studies on this sort of thing and it seems to come out that average attention span is between 10-20mins, so a 60 min lesson is already pushing it.

People can't concentrate for that length of time. I agree they can be utilised for things with a practical element though as you said.

I remember having double maths on a Monday morning at high school and it was ridiculous

It's a timetabling thing at my DC's school. PE they can make a double period as every DC in the year has PE at the same time, but things like FoodTech are timetabled at the same time as subjects like history which you wouldn't really want in a double period.

At school we had double lessons for PE and technology subjects, including food tech. Singles were 50 minutes long, so a double was an hour forty.

It worked well, I thought. I can see why maths or English might be a bit of a slog though.

I later years at school we only had double periods. Worked well. We only had to take books for 3 subjects to school and wasted less time shuffling around from class to class.

We also hadbreaks for 5 mins if the teacher thought we were getting bored. Although this usually wasn’t necessary.

ds S4 has three double periods which he hates - English, Physics and Modern Studies. None of the teachers even give them a 5 min comfort break in the middle to break up the lesson/have a stretch.

He also has two separate PE lessons on the same day!

I can absolutely see the advantage of a double PE period as they barely get time to change and warm up before the lesson is over, but timetabling probably makes it difficult.

When I was at school the whole of S4/S5 (way back in the early 80s when less people stayed on to S5) had double PE and full use of all the facilities after lunch on a Friday afternoon. I wasn't particularly sporty, but it was still a good end to the week.

My school always did, that was back in the 90s. We have over an hour, usually getting changed during the break before and after to maximise PE time.

I went to a countryside school so being outdoors was in most children’s nature. I didn’t know it wasn’t a thing!

In England - lessons are 60 minutes. My DCs school tends to give Options one double at least once a fortnight - which helps for things like Food tech. But in sme subjects eg History they tend to have an unofficial "break" in the middle as it's a bit too long.
Science lessons (and I used to teach science), 1 hour seems long enough - their practicals aren't that complicated and more time just leads to more hanging around and not getting on with it.

Single lessons are 45 mins at my son's school and there are 7 timetabled per day.

Maths, English, Languages and Humanities are always singles. Sciences, tech, games, art, music, drama are always doubles.

Seems logical to me. Double lessons where "longer" activities happen.

The only exception is PE which is a single lesson but they are always immediately before/after a break or lunchtime, so one of the "changing" sessions is during a break or lunch so doesn't impinge on lesson time. If it starts after lunch or a break, they're expected to be changed and ready to start when the lesson starts, so have to change in their own time.

Just the same as it was when I was at school 40 years ago, except back then each lesson was just 35 mins but there were 8 lessons per day.

Timetabling is also a lot more complicated than just having the right teachers with the right students at the right time.

The exam boards suggest it will take x hours to teach the GCSE/A level specifications. English, maths and sciences have a much higher number of teaching hours than languages, arts, humanities. Therefore they need twice the timetable allocation. If you make all lessons the same length then they'll never all fit in the timetable. Shorter lessons, and then doubling them up for E/M/S is the only way they can fit.

We have 50 min lessons and doubles are the norm for most subjects most of the time . It means that I need to chunk lessons into sections to keep focus but as I teach science it’s easy to do and gives time for practical work. In the past at the same school we had 45 min lessons mostly as singles and practical work was very rushed - clearing up in time for the next class was tricky. On the plus side lessons flew past!

This past year I also had a triple lesson of a single before lunch and a double after with the same class- which has its pros and cons. One issue was I only saw them once a week so I had to deliver the same content in big lumps of time , rather than trickle feed it over different days . There is a limit to how much new information anyone can absorb in one go.

Years ago a timetable quirk gave me an extremely challenging class for 4 lessons in a row every other week. It was known as black Wednesday and luckily hadn’t been done since.

On a full teaching day I teach a maximum of 4 classes - 3 doubles and a single and I really like it. That said, I can see for subjects without the practical element it’s a long time to fill productively.

in England - lessons are 60 minutes.
I think you mean in the one specific school in England that your dc attend.

Speaking of science classes - my DS has 3 lessons a week, but 2 teachers. The same as last year. He said often the teacher that takes the one lesson hasn't been told what the class is up to so can't follow on, so they end up watching 'science programmes' on video!
They do everything in blocks. So, electricity, photosynthesis, acids etc.
I don't understand why they can't have Miss X teaching them electricity for two lessons and Mr Y teaching photosynthesis for one. Then both teachers know where they are. Again, it makes sense to me but I don't know what the constraints are in the school.

I don't understand why they can't have Miss X teaching them electricity for two lessons and Mr Y teaching photosynthesis for one.

They probably want the whole year group do to the "end of block test" at the same time.

What year is your son in?

It might be a practical equipment restriction that there's only 2 or 3 sets of stuff, so other classes are on the rota to use it.

Personally I think each year group should have one entire afternoon per week of pe/games/athletics. Leaves the rest of the week for classroom subjects and also negated the hideous "after pe shower" experience as they can just go straight home in gym kit.