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Leopard Time
One exciting change in the bell schedule from previous years will be the addition of an advisory period. This advisory period will be referred to as Leopard Time. LHS and WSMS are both implementing a version of Leopard Time and requested 5 additional minutes to our school day. This additional 5 minutes, which was recently approved, will benefit our campus in numerous ways. -Instructional time for each of our 8 class periods will be able to remain the same at 45 minutes, passing periods will stay at 5 minutes, and Leopard Time (advisory) will be 25 minutes per day. We also wanted to let you know that the additional 5 minutes of instruction in the bell schedule did not lengthen or extend the basic (daily) work time of our teachers.
Further Leopard Time Details:
Each LHS student will have a Homeroom Leopard Time on their actual schedule. The teacher and classroom on their schedule will be where they report for the first few weeks of school during Leopard Time. At the beginning of the year, students will report to Homeroom Leopard Time and complete different activities each day (rules presentations, safety protocol training, beginning of the year presentations, and team building activities). Towards the middle of the second week of school (date TBD), all of our students will receive training on Leopard Time procedures from their Homeroom Leopard Time teachers. Students will have a total of 2 days of training during Homeroom Leopard Time and be given a chance to ask questions before our first actual day of non-homeroom Leopard Time. With that said, our typical Leopard Time structure (90% of typical school days) will not have students reporting to their Homeroom Leopard Time on their Schedule. After reporting to Leopard Time Homeroom for the first week and a half of school, students will only report to their Homeroom about 10% of the remaining school days. After students have been trained, -they will follow a published Homeroom Leopard Time schedule (will be available on the website) when they need to report to their Homeroom for SEL, approved character trait lessons, and other district/state mandated lessons throughout the year.
What does Leopard Time look like when students aren’t required to report to their Homeroom Leopard Time?
Approximately 90% of the time, when the bell rings at the end of 6th period (at 2:10PM), our 1,600+ Leopards will be able to practice voice and choice during Leopard Time. Our students may choose from activities such as tutoring, project collaboration, gym time (aux. gym), library (coding, Makerspace, real world application), café/courtyard, and they may attend any course/teacher on their current year’s schedule (excluding athletics). Leopard Time offers our students the opportunity to complete classwork, seek tutoring from any teacher on their schedule, and strengthens their ability to both prioritize their needs and manage their time. Leopard Time also offers teachers valuable time within the school day to address and help all types of student needs (which would typically have to be addressed in before or after school tutorials in previous years). While before and after school tutorials will still be an option for our students, Leopard Time will offer our students another tool to be successful, and we are looking forward to partnering with each LHS family to ensure we have a great year. In future newsletters, we will share the Leopard Time training slides, which go into even more detail. -This will allow all of our stakeholders the chance to ask questions and have conversations with their students regarding how they are utilizing Leopard Time.
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