Opinion: Two-week rotations are better than three-week rotations
April 1, 2021
Fenton High was operating on a three-week rotation of classes for a little over the first semester of the 2020-2021 school year. This rotation between classes is too long to go without seeing any of your classes or going over the material. Students spend too much time focused on the classes they are in to worry about retaining the information they learned three weeks ago.
According to edutopia.org, the “Forgetting Curve” is the measure of how much people forget over time. Psychologist Herman Ebbinghaus revealed “Without any reinforcement or connections to prior knowledge, information is quickly forgotten. Roughly 56 percent in one hour, 66 percent after a day and 75 percent after six days.”
With 75 percent of information forgotten within the first six days, students cannot be expected to come back three entire weeks later to continue where they left off.
The Fenton Administration realized this and they decided, with the Center for Disease Control quarantine guideline changing from a 14-day quarantine to a 10-day, they could change the schedule into something that works better for the student body. “Two-week intervals give the students and teachers the opportunity to see each other more frequently,” Principal Laura Lemke said. “Which is good for the continuity of instruction/learning.”
Constant instruction schedules would be ideal. But in the times we are in, this two-week rotation might be the best of what we can do for now. “The information we learned in one rotation of classes does not have to be put on hold for quite as long,” senior Delaney Fries said. “This makes it a little easier to come back to.”
The two-week rotation will continue for the rest of the school year, pending changes in the crazy times being faced currently. The facility is doing the best they can with the situation and will again make changes if something isn’t working for the student body.
