Basics Breakdown: IB Scheduling (PHU-Specific)

It’s a pretty common joke in freshman year that the first test of whether or not you’re “smart enough” for IB is whether or not you can understand the schedule. In my freshman year, I kind of caught a break. It was COVID year and we were all online, so I wasn’t trying to find my way to classes- the worst thing that could happen was clicking the wrong TEAMs link (which I did. Many times.) Jokes aside, there’s no question that the PHU IB schedule is a bit strange and hard to understand at first. After 4 years, my mom still doesn’t totally get the AR rotation. What does that mean? Let’s jump in. 

Side note: some of these articles are meant for all IB learners, while some are geared towards students at my high school specifically. This happens to be the latter. If your school does things similarly, awesome! Hopefully this can help you, too. But this scheduling does not apply to all IB schools, so don’t panic if it doesn’t make any sense- your school may do something totally different, and that’s okay!

Block Schedule

“Blocks” are the core of the IB schedule. Some students are on block schedule in middle school as well, so if that’s you, it works pretty similarly. Essentially, there are 3 rotation days labeled A, B and C. On each day, you will have certain classes. For example, on A day you might have biology and English, and on B day you have math and history. This works because instead of having one 45 minute period of history every day, you have an hour and a half long history class every three days. If you’re looking at that math and thinking “woah, that’s less time overall,” you’re right, but stick with me. 

These long classes are referred to as “blocks,” hence the name “block schedule.” As a freshman, you will typically have blocks across periods 1 and 2 and periods 4 and 5. For example, say 1st period starts at 7:25 and ends at 8:12. Second period starts at 8:17 and ends at 9:04. For a traditional student, they might have AP Literature first period and biology second period. But not you. If the day was an A day, you would have biology during both periods, from 7:25 to 9:04. This is why blocks are typically referred to by their day and their period: hence biology would be your A12 block (verbally, this is A one-two, not A twelve). The same thing would apply to your 4th and 5th period: your A45 block would be English. You would have math as your B12, history as your B45, and so on. 

What about the other 3 periods? Right. These periods are referred to as “skinnies,” or essentially class periods that are the same length as a traditional class. These are not blocks. Let's talk about 6th and 7th period first, because that’s easier. For freshmen specifically, you will take your foreign language class every day, during 6th or 7th period (not both). The other period will be your elective, which could be anything from theater to an AP class. I’m not sure why exactly they chose to do it this way, but essentially, no matter the rotation day, your 6th and 7th periods will be the same 2 classes. Quick note: in some instances that have to do with elective scheduling, some freshmen may have 45 skinnies and 67 block periods. If this is you, same concept applies, just mentally swap out 67 with 45 in the descriptions provided. Here is an example schedule to help you visualize what all of this actually means:

	A day	B day	C day
1st and 2nd	Biology	Math	Approaches to Learning
3rd	AR	AR	AR
4th and 5th	English	History	Diploma Support
6th	Theater	Theater	Theater
7th	Spanish	Spanish	Spanish

There’s a few potentially confusing aspects of the schedule we should clarify. Approaches to Learning is kind of a mix of philosophy, IB prep and a research class. If you took a gifted elective in middle school, it’s kind of similar. Diploma Support is the fancy name for what is essentially a study hall. It’s been called many names over the years: Critical Thinking Skills, Coaching, etc. It might even change names again after I leave. But if you see something along those lines, that's your study hall. You can (and should) work on homework during that block, and this is also a good time for meetings with teachers if you need to have them. Make sense? Awesome. 

The day rotation goes in order and then repeats. If Monday is A day, Tuesday is B day, Wednesday: C, Thursday: A, Friday: B. Then, we proceed as though the weekend never happened and pick up on Monday with C day, Tuesday: A, etc. The only time it ever resets is between Semester 1 and 2. To help everyone understand deadlines, we refer to the sets of days as “sessions.” In the above example, the first Mon-Wed of school would be Session 1. Session 2 would start on Thursday with A day and finish on the second Monday with C day. Session 3 would begin on Tuesday, and so on. 

AR

Alright. Now comes the dreaded 3rd period AR discussion. This is by far the most confusing part of the IB schedule, so strap in. 

Think about how the earth rotates around the sun while simultaneously revolving on an axis. That’s kind of how AR works. So you know your schedule is on a 3 day rotation: A, B and C. That's the earth around the sun. Within that, AR is on a 9 day rotation, cycling through each of your class periods in order of period and day. The starting point of the rotation is weird: on Session 1 of A day, you go to your C67 class during 3rd period. The reason it starts here is to make sure you’re not starting the AR rotation on the same day as the block rotation day. For instance, you wouldn’t want to start with A12 AR on an A day because otherwise you would have 3 straight periods of your A12 class. This way, the rotation is automatically offset. The following day, B day, you go to A12 AR. From there, the progression gets a little more normal. The AR rotation proceeds through all of your 12 blocks, then moves to 45 (starting at A45) and so on. So, the full rotation would be:

Day 1 (A): C67 AR

Day 2 (B): A12 AR

Day 3 (C): B12 AR

Day 4 (A): C12 AR

Day 5 (B): A45 AR

Day 6 (C): B45 AR

Day 7 (A): C45 AR

Day 8 (B): A67 AR

Day 9 (C): B67 AR

Day 10 (A): C67 AR

Wait, but didn’t you say freshmen don’t have 67 blocks? Yup, very true. So during every 67 AR, one of two things will happen. You’ll either go to your foreign language teacher for all 3 67 ARs if they’re available, or you’ll get dispersed to other classes if they have a traditional 3rd period class. In the latter case, those periods typically become study halls.

If you’re still horribly confused, that’s okay. It takes a little while to understand, but it becomes second nature after a few weeks. Your teachers will help guide you in your first days on campus. And yes, it can be hard to remember what AR is on any given day, especially after a weekend or a break. Even seniors get confused on occasion. At least once a week, someone will text the group chat “what’s AR today?” Sometimes even the teachers don’t know. But you all figure it out together and sometimes, you just gotta embrace the chaos.

So why such a complicated system? There's a kind of long and messy explanation that has to do with IB-required teaching hours and things like that, but here’s two reasons that are relevant to you. Remember when you so intelligently noticed that 90 minute blocks every three days give you less class time than 45 minutes every day? AR helps to offset that. Yes, it’s still less time than traditional students, but it does make more of a difference than you’d think. Secondly, AR helps tide you over as 3 schooldays can be a long time to go without thinking about a subject. Essentially, it jogs your brain a little bit to remember your course material. Some teachers use AR for direct instruction, while others will give time to work on assignments or IB projects.

Sophomore-Senior Scheduling

Most likely, if you’re reading this as a freshman, we’ve covered most of the material that applies to you right now. But some people, like myself, like having a heads up about what’s coming their way in the future. So, here’s a quick summary of things that may change scheduling-wise over the following 3 years.

Most freshmen have 67 skinnies (at least, this was the case when I was there), one being their foreign language and one being an elective. In sophomore year, this changes. You still have 2 skinnies, but when you have them and what they are varies a lot more. Your foreign language moves into a block class, and sophomore year is the only year you get to take 2 electives, which go into your two skinny slots. However, they aren’t necessarily 6th and 7th period anymore. Some will have 1st and 2nd period electives and a rare few will have 4th and 5th, although that is generally avoided due to complications with lunch. Your skinnies must be consecutive; you can’t have an elective 1st period and the other one 4th period because it messes with the block scheduling. Beyond that, sophomore year scheduling looks a lot like freshman year. 

Junior year is where the biggest change happens: 90% of students stop having skinny electives. All of their classes are now blocks with the exception of AR. This comes with an extra Diploma Support block, which gets to be really helpful when the IB workload kicks up. There are some exceptions to this: as of writing this, a lot of kids taking IB arts classes (film, theater, music, visual art) still end up with skinnies or some other modified schedule because oftentimes your classes are mixed with traditional students who can’t take block classes. This affects how much Diploma Support you receive, but that looks different depending on your individual schedule; you’ll cross that bridge as you come to it. Additionally, you start taking Theory of Knowledge, which is a more advanced version of the Approaches to Learning class required in freshman year (sophomores don't really have a class like that). 

Senior year isn’t much different from junior year, except that if you took SL History you get an elective back. Your schedule will depend on that elective: if you choose a block class like sports science, you’ll have a full block schedule. If you pick a traditional class or an IB arts class, you’ll have skinnies. TOK continues, as do all your junior year classes, and that’s pretty much it.

Thanks for sticking it out! Our schedule is definitely a bit of a doozy, but it also has a lot of benefits including more flexible nightly workloads and lots of work time built into your schedule. Remember, your teachers and peers are there to help, and you can always ask them for help to get to where you need to be.