Y11 Booster Timetable - how to do it?!

[ablizzard]

Hi all,

 

Hoping someone has a genius idea!

 

I'm looking for a more efficient way to deliver our Y11 booster timetable.

Currently, I do it all on Excel and create paper registers and then have a nightmare with cover through the admin team!

 

I want to find a way to be able to run booster revision sessions at the same time as having the normal timetable running.

 

For example:

There is a GCSE History Exam on a Wednesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon, last lesson, I want to put on a History booster session. I obviously only want the History students to be assigned to this booster and everyone else remain on normal timetable. The History teacher isn't timetabled to teach Y11 during this last lesson on the Tuesday.

 

Currently, I go through all the exams dates with the timetable open and map out in Excel who is going where and who will be teaching them for the whole 5/6 weeks that exams are running. It's quite the spreadsheet. It works fairly well but it is a huge task and takes days to get sorted and can cause issues because we are not using SIMS.

 

The only solution I have come up with so far is using Alternative Curriculums. I could create Alternative Curriculum activities and and name it 'History Booster'. I could then assign individual students to this activity for the particular period that I want it to run and staff it. This idea seems to work well for small groups.

As far as I'm aware, the only way to add students to ACs are on an individual basis? Which would be a lengthy process, especially if I am trying to allocate the whole Year group to different maths boosters depending on tier entry and ability for example.

 

Has anyone got any bright ideas that would help?

 

Thanks in advance!!

 

Andrew

[a_masters]

Any reason why you can't add it as an additional class in whatever block is on during that period? Can then assign in bulk via student curriculum.

[ablizzard]

Any reason why you can't add it as an additional class in whatever block is on during that period? Can then assign in bulk via student curriculum.

Thank you!

 

This could work! I guess the only downside to this would be that I'd lose the flexibility of staffing it with different people?

 

For instance, I might need one Maths teacher to do a booster one day but a different one another day. If it added them as an additional class in that block, the staffing would repeat fortnightly? I guess I could solve that just be doing it as cover on SIMS. I guess that would the same problem with AC as everything will repeat fortnightly due to how I've set up the cycle.

[a_masters]

We actually have something similar in place at the moment, timetable-wise, where students come out of one double maths a week for further maths. Looking at it, it looks like someone's been through and removed them from the maths class during the same period, as it will come up as a clash in their timetables otherwise and they'd appear on both registers. So might not work in bulk!

 

Edited March 2, 2023 by a_masters