The new school year has started and with that comes a lot of new changes within the school, such as a new schedule. Here are a few tips to use this new schedule to your advantage.

The new four-hour block schedule was designed to decrease stress-levels, give more time for homework, and help teachers do more labs or fun things in class. So far the students are loving the new schedule about 85% of the students who took the survey this week said they liked the schedule or they were fine with it and and the other 15% said they didn’t like it and would go back to the old schedule. The new schedule also seems to be doing what it was designed to do, most students are less stressed, getting their homework done on time, and the teachers seem to enjoy it too. Also, students seem to be learning more than they used to be.

To take the most advantage as you can of this new schedule, here are a few tips. First, don’t stress out with your homework. You have two days to do your homework so take your time with it, maybe do half of it the night you were assigned and the other half the night before it is due. Also being assigned homework over the weekend give you two times as much time to get it done, so take your time and make sure the answers are right.

Second, think of the school day as two parts, the first half of your day is your first two classes and the second half of the day is your last two classes. This will keep you thinking that the school day isn’t that long or that bad. Thinking of the day like this can decrease stress even more and can even promote productivity.

Lastly, having one hour and fifteen minute classes can be boring and may get sleepy and hard to listen to what’s going on in class. To get better at listening for longer periods of time every single day, here are a few strategies. It may sound dumb but, choose to listen in class, choosing to learn something new can focus the mind more on what is happening in class. Also ask questions, this keeps you attentive in class and you also learn something while you are asking the question. Finally, focus on the teacher’s words and message, don’t focus on his/her clothes, actions or things around the room. If you find yourself getting distracted by anything other than what the teacher is saying, stop, and try to get focused again by looking at the notes on the board.

This new schedule gives the students a lot of help to improve in the classroom, but it will go to waste if they don’t use it right.