Scheduling

Every Once instructor needs three hours of time officially in their schedule for every ten students they will be working with (15 minutes of instruction for every student plus some additional time for transitions between students when needed). To be clear, during those scheduled hours, the Once instructor will not be available in any other capacity (to be a substitute, aide, etc.).

To make sure that every student in the Once program receives their daily 15 minutes of instruction, it is crucial to include explicit times and locations for every Once session in the schedules for the class, the student, and the instructor. To make sure students don’t miss the same part of their base schedule each day, students can receive Once during a different period on different days. Successful schedules maximize the time a student has with a Once instructor while causing the least amount of disruption to the general classroom instruction and rhythm.

Below are three sample schedules.

An aide provides Once full-time, tutoring in the morning and afternoon. Five hours of tutoring each day would serve 20 students. A rotating schedule would ensure that students don't miss the same period each day.

In this sample, four instructors work with all 24 kindergarten students (six students each) in Class A during Class A's 90-minute reading block. The same six instructors work with all 24 kindergarten students in Class B during their 90-minute reading block. The same six instructors work with all 24 kindergarten students in Class C during their 90-minute reading block.

In this sample, kindergarten paraprofessionals provide Once instruction to 12 students over the course of a three-hour block. While classrooms must adjust to a morning without para support, differentiation becomes easier as students learn to read faster than ever.