Scheduling is a key component to running BookNook at your school or site. The time constraints of schedules already place and availability of personnel can be a challenge. Here are some helpful tips to help you schedule (our nifty scheduling spreadsheet is also attached to this document):
- Student and Staff schedules: Obviously!
- Students: Think about what subjects or activities do you think students can be pulled from during the day while receiving support with BookNook. Many schools opt to have students pulled out of social science or use BookNook during small group reading time. After school is also a great option!
- Staff: This is a huge one - whether your guides are school staff, volunteers, or other students, scheduling with them is going to be part of the puzzle and you may have to make some concessions with student scheduling to make it work
- Time: BookNook sessions can range from 20 to 30 minutes. To optimize usage in the classroom or in an afterschool program, we highly recommend creating a dedicated block in your schedule to host sessions.
- During the day, BookNook can be used as a supplemental program to existing ELA curricula. It has also been used as part of small group interventions.
- In the afterschool setting, programs again can use the product to supplement existing curricula or offer it as a stand alone.
- Devices: Booknook is a technology based platform that demands a 1-1 ratio of devices to users. We recommend that in addition to accounting for student and staffs' individual schedules, you should also account for your organization's access to devices.
- If possible, schedule to regularly register or sign out all devices needed for your students.
- If your site does not have access to as many devices as you have in your student group, we recommend coupling BookNook usage time with another activity that can allow rotation of groups.