How to: Time Block your Lessons, Bento Box Style
Ever heard of a bento box? These little Japanese delights are a daily staple for me, and one of the top 100 reasons that I love my lunch break. (Yes, this is a lot of reasons: I really love my lunch break.) Instead of tossing your food into one giant mess of garbaldy-goop, these nifty containers have tiny sections for each scrumptious ingredient. Genius!
I love my Bento boxes so much that I’ve built a customized rotating schedule for each compartment, complete with weekly themes like “Chipotle Cheddar,” “Sweet Thai Chili,” and “Strawberry Jalapeño Surprise.” (What’s the surprise, you ask? Guess you’ll have to wait and find out!) Every week, I pick (1) something munchy and crunchy, (2) a delectable cheese, (3) a dipping sauce, (4) a fruit, (5) a nut, and (6) some crucifer-ish vegetables (a loose interpretation). Covers my nutritional bases, for sure, and gives me a reason to roam Trader Joe’s with abandon. I have a whole spreadsheet for my lunch ensembles, planned embarrassingly far in advance!
And, if you think about it, a bento box lunch is the perfect metaphor for the well-planned lesson. A little protein, some starch, a whole lotta fiber…some skill-builders, a bit of direct instruction, a solid formative assessment…same, same, am I right?
When I first started teaching, it took me a while to realize that all of my lessons essentially needed the same few ingredients. I would lesson plan long into the night: creating brilliant activity after brilliant activity, but exhausting myself in the process. And, honestly? My kids were pretty confused, day after day, by the abrupt changes in routine. Ever since I switched to the bento box method? I can plan a lesson with my eyes closed, and my weekends are gloriously slide-free. Ahh, imagine!
Allow me to introduce: the pedagogical bento box, aka “Time Blocking.” The principle that each and every lesson can be planned in exactly the same way, with the same components day after day. The containers don’t change: it’s the ingredients that rotate. User-tested and student-approved, time blocking can change your life. And I’m not kidding!
Let me show you how this works. Think about the things you do in class each week, and use them to assemble a daily routine. Each lesson will have the same flow start to finish, which will allow you to use the same slides, to “bulk action” your planning, and to whip together a lesson in a pinch when your tire goes flat. First, let’s choose our components: the containers for each ingredient. I’ll suggest a few below:
Daily Warm-ups: Warm-ups can include daily videos, free writes, sample problems, or even silent reading. Or, you know, an intellectually-curious meme...as long as there’s a pair share, right??
Housekeeping: Time to take attendance, to go over the class calendar, to make announcements, or to have students check their grades.
Skill Builders: Independent practice time for ongoing course content. This could include vocab review, personal flashcards, or online learning platforms where students can self-direct.
Daily Drills: Formative assessments based on current course objectives. Problem sets, conjugation drills, vocab checks, daily diagrams…anything that takes less than 10 minutes and has an answer key, basically. Students should be able to assess their progress with a glance!
Direct Instruction: Teacher-led instruction, including notes, demonstrations, lectures, and the like. (This is the “meat” of the lesson, and the most teacher-centric component.)
Guided Practice: Student-centered activities based on the learning objective, typically in response to instruction. (Here, you can circulate to provide feedback, or call for answers at the end, but this should really be student-centered time, for the most part.)
Closure: The daily wind-down, with some sort of student reflection on the objective. This could be a self-evaluation, an exit ticket, or a final think-pair-share.
Homework: A quick recap of student to-do’s or anything that should be reviewed at home.
Bonus Activity: An in-case-of-emergency slide, to be used in the event of a technological breakdown or an unexpectedly quick lesson. This could be an independent reading timer, a YouTube video on the content, an old Quizlet or Kahoot, or time to start the day’s homework. No need to come up with something fresh each day: I typically keep my bonus activity slide for the whole unit, as I only need to use it once or twice. (Mine is a children’s TV show…loud and proud.)
Once you’ve settled on your components, you can use them to build daily lessons quickly and effortlessly. The activities and questions will vary, day to day, but the core components should be the same. Here’s the time blocking for one of my courses below, with variations for each class period:
As you can see, I have the same basic categories each day: A daily video, housekeeping, an online skill builder, a conjugation drill, and then a lesson and activity followed by a wind-down. (Sometimes, just a quick review and two activities, if the learning objective carries over multiple days.)
With this method, I can plan a lesson in twenty or thirty minutes if I really need to, and time blocking allows me to plan even farther in advance. I can even create three or four lessons at a time: finding multiple days’ worth of daily videos, creating a week’s worth of daily drills, or setting up a skill builder that will last for the entire unit. Once the first 30 minutes are accounted for, I’m free to focus on the fun part: my direct instruction and guided practice activities. Yum!
Ok, so it’s efficient, but is it good teaching? Absolutely. Don’t think of time blocking as rote or boring: think of it as variations upon a theme. (Strawberry Jalapeño Surprise is anything but boring, I assure you.) Time blocking allows you to hit your marks on your content , to make sure that you’re prioritizing appropriately, and to create consistency in your instruction. In all my years of teaching, I’ve never had a student complain. In fact, the daily structure makes them feel safe: most of my students appreciate the daily dose of confidence when they walk in, knowing exactly what to expect! And, having my rhythm down makes me a confident teacher, too.
So, what’s how do you time block your lessons? What elements do you use, each and every day? If you’re reading this, I’d be tickled to hear!
