How do I handle recess?

Connect It To Lunch

Some schools schedule lunch and recess in tandem with classes moving in pairs. One class goes to lunch and one to recess. Half way through the time, they switch. For this approach in ESSMaker, you may want to set the lunch period to the entire time for lunch and recess combined and then align the blocks in a non-staggered way.

Another approach is to schedule lunch normally, but make it implied that recess is the 15 minutes after lunch without actually expressing that on the calendar at all. Also with this appoach, you could just extend the lunch duration by 15 minutes with the understanding that the last 15 minutes isn’t in the cafeteria.

This could mean that you arrange your lunch blocks with some overlaps intentionally and may get some warnings from the validator that you can safely ignore.

Treat It As a Special

You can set recess as a special. The question is how many instructors to use. If you say 1, then you get one column for recess on your master schedule. That could make for some overlaps there, which shouldn’t be a big problem unless your recess is staggered.

If you need multiple classes to be at recess simultaneously, ESSMaker can display your intentions. Drop the recess blocks precisely on top of each other and the schedules should do the right thing.

An alternative would be to set the number of instructors to 2 or 3. This would give you that many columns on the master schedule and more room for displaying those recess blocks.

Plan It On The Grade-level Pages

Another option is to put recess on the grade level pages, like you would for other ad hoc blocks or core subjects.