Rotating Specials Schedule Planning Page

Planning presents you with a holding area of class boxes for every session you must schedule. You drag and drop them onto your schedule.

Overview

• The holding area under the title has buttons for the planning tools, buttons for the special area boxes, the intervention/enrichment boxes, and a Move-to-Ribbon button.
• Under the holding area is the actual planning calendar with hours depicted down the left side and rotation groups across the top.

Moving Class Assignments onto the Calendar

When you click on a class assignment to drag it, the shape will change such that the top left corner becomes a pointer. That’s the corner you should observe as you move it to a place to position it.

When the assignment is over a legitimate place, that box on the planning calendar will turn dark. Note that you can only drop Grade 4 classes into the Grade 4 column, for instance.

You can drag items out of the holding area onto the calendar or back to the holding area, if desired.

Making the Dragging Much Easier

It is tedious to drag items long distances especially if scrolling the window is required. This would be common for classes late in the day or late in the week. The ribbon comes to the rescue.

Click the Move to Ribbon button to place all those classes in a ribbon that sticks to the top of the window. Now you can scroll the ribbon left and right for the class assignments you wish to work on. You can also scroll the calendar such that the area you need is close the ribbon. Now your dragging and dropping is all short distance. So:

• use the ribbon
• scroll first
• drag and drop over short distances

Adjust Class Assignments by a Few Minutes

You don’t need to drop the class exactly where it goes. You can move an assignment up and down in small increments very easily. Just click on a class assignment on the planning calendar. It will be highlighted with a dashed border. Now you can move it up and down with your arrow keys in one minute increments.

Planning Tools

Valid?

This button runs the validator logic against your schedule and generates a summary report for problems that it finds. Here is a successful run:

• All the classes are assigned.
• Classes do not have the overlapping commitments.
• Special Areas and I/E do not have the overlapping commitments.
• Special Areas and I/E have a 30 min. lunch between 11 and 1.
• Rotation groups all have the same rotation length.
• Special Area teachers have one class per period.
• Lunches are not exceeding the maximum tables in the cafeteria.

There is a link to the full details, in case you have many errors detected.

Create Blocks

This tool enables you to add blocks to the master schedule for various things like Math or 5th Grade Chorus.

Edit Block

This tool asks you to click on a block to edit. It then will permit you to change the start time and duration to whatever custom value you wish.

Delete Block

This tool asks you to click on a block to delete. It then displays the details for that block and presents a button that will delete the block.

The main blocks that represent the rotating specials or lunch are not allowed to be deleted. This assumes that deleting one of them would be a mistake.