School Board Adopts Lesson Guidelines
Guidelines on how to divide the day’s classroom instruction have been adopted by the Fullerton School District board.
Teachers in the district will be encouraged to follow the guidelines, which outline the amount of time that should be spent on subjects including reading, writing and math. For example, kindergartners are expected to receive 350 minutes of reading and writing lessons and 250 minutes of math lessons each week. The minutes vary for older students.
District trustees emphasized the guidelines are suggestions, not requirements. They said they want teachers to have the flexibility to combine subjects and to take students on field trips.
Supt. Ron Cooper said the guidelines would be most helpful to new teachers, when organizing their classroom instruction plan.
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Allocating Subjects
Under a new document, “Suggested Guidelines for Allocation of Instructional Minutes,” adopted by the Fullerton School District board this week, teachers will be asked to follow suggestions for the number of minutes to be spent per week on various subjects. The breakdown by grades in minutes:
*--*
Kinder- First/ Fourth- Subject garten second Third Sixth English/language arts* 350 700 525 425 Math 250 325 300 300 Science/health * * 200 200 History/social science ** ** ** 200 Visual/performing arts 100 100 100 100 Physical education 100 100 100 100
*--*
* Includes reading and writing
**History, social science, science, health and nutrition to be integrated with other subject lessons
Source: Fullerton School District; Researched by MIMI KO CRUZ / For The Times
Los Angeles Times
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