With a week long break for Thanksgiving and a two week break for the winter holidays, the third six week grading period will take nine weeks to complete leaving teachers to come up with different approaches regarding tests and assignments.

“For geometry, we ended a unit right before the break so that we can start a fresh unit after the break,” geometry and precalculus teacher Kelli Duckworth said. “For Pre-cal we planned our unit so that it’s kind of two different topics, and so one topic ends before the break and the other one will start after.”

Classes such as AP Humanities and AP Physics 1 scheduled tests for right before the break begins.

“We finished up with periods one and two right at the end of Thanksgiving, so we are giving the test over those periods, and then we’re starting up with our next unit after Thanksgiving,” humanities teacher Beth Evans said. “We are not [giving homework to students], in fact we had a conversation about making sure that our next chapter wouldn’t be due right when they got back, so they wouldn’t be tempted to do homework because we want them to get to rest and relax.”

Other teachers have elected to hold off teaching new material to students before the break.

“We looked for natural breaks in the curriculum where we could find a stopping place I think and then start back up after the break,” chemistry teacher Lara Russey said. “We’ve finished with naming [ions] and Pre-AP and when we come back we are going to start into more complex Lewis Dot structures. It’s healthy to have some time off and focus on family.”  

While many students and staff alike are eager for a break, it is easy to forget content over nine days.

“I don’t think it [homework] is something we need to stress about, but we still need to practice what we’re doing especially since you have a week between when you learned it, and when you’re going to see it again,” Duckworth said. “I think something to practice would be great but not too many assignments.”