The instructional day continues beyond the end of class time. Freeport uses Team Time (time scheduled for teams to meet) and Extended Day as two additional blocks of instructional time for those students who need extra practice and skill enhancement. (Funding for the additional hours comes from the district.) The Extended Day program begins after Team Time for students who have failed or are at risk of failure. There are two teachers in every Extended Day class; the student teacher ratio is about 12:1, which allows for more individualized instruction and a different format from students' regular content-area classes. At the end of each five-week session, teachers reassess students for the program. If students need even greater individualized attention, teachers on the team assign them one-on-one mentors.

In the Extended Day classes, the teachers strive to be creative and have fun in the way they deliver and re-deliver the curriculum to these students. This is evidenced in the following snapshot of an Extended Day math class.

A Mental & Physical Workout in an Extended Day Math Class

Twenty-five students are standing with their arms spread wide in a math classroom. Today they are learning about different kinds of angles. To understand acute angles, the teacher directs the students to position their arms so that their arms create an acute angle. One or two students lead the class in positioning their arms. The teacher provides some explanation, makes sure everybody in the class has positioned his or her arms correctly, and continues the same process for obtuse, right, and scalene angles. After the students learn these angles, the teacher begins a game similar to "Simon Says." The teacher tells them to say the names of the angles as they create the angles with their arms. The students repeat the names as their arms fly in the air, coming to a rest at acute, obtuse, scalene, or right. By the end of the class, the students have had a mental and physical workout.

Later, in this same math class, the students review probability and statistics by counting the number and variety of snacks in a large box. The students are engaged and having fun. One by one, they say which snack they want and what the probability is that they will randomly select that snack from the box. Taking her direction from the students, who recalculate the odds, the teacher keeps a running tally on the overhead projector. Students are allowed to choose their snack when they accurately calculate the odds of getting the one they want. They also figure out which snacks are the most popular, based on the number of students who wanted them. By the end of the lesson, every child in the class has calculated correctly-and is eating a snack.

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