Teaching Two Preps a Day in a Mountain West High School

Quick answer: Two preps in a Mountain West high school usually means you are the entire science department, often on a four-day calendar with longer periods and fewer of them. The way through is not working faster. It is choosing units whose skills repeat across both courses, so one piece of planning does duty twice and the grading load stays survivable.

Why does two preps feel like four out here?

Small schools do not distribute work evenly. In a building with two hundred students you may be the only person certified in science, which means physical science and biology both belong to you, along with the equipment, the ordering, the safety paperwork and whichever elective the master schedule needs filled. Nobody else in the building can cover a lesson for you.

Calendar structure compounds it. Four-day weeks are widespread across Idaho, where more than fifty districts now use them, and common across rural Wyoming as well. Longer periods sound like a gift until you realize a single absence costs a student a quarter of the week's contact time and you are reteaching Monday's lab on Thursday to four different people.

How do I choose units that carry across both preps?

Look for skills rather than topics. Measurement with uncertainty, ratio reasoning, reading a graph and explaining a mechanism show up in physical science, biology, chemistry and any elective you get handed. Teach the skill explicitly once, name it the same way in both courses, and the second prep becomes an application of the first instead of an unrelated body of material.

Simple machines are the clearest example of a unit that pays twice. Lever Law & Pulley Systems Worksheets for Grades 7–9 gives grades seven through nine worked problems on levers and pulley systems, which anchors force and ratio work for a physical science section and gives an older physics group a concrete starting point before the algebra arrives. One set of examples, two courses, one explanation you refine each year.

What do the state testing calendars do to my plan?

Move a hundred miles in this region and the calendar changes name. Idaho runs the ISAT, Montana uses MontCAS, Wyoming has WY-TOPP, Utah gives RISE, New Mexico administers NM-MSSA, and Nevada combines Smarter Balanced in the middle grades with the ACT for eleventh graders. The dates differ, but the effect on a two-prep teacher is identical everywhere.

You lose the room, the machines and several class periods, usually from the prep you had least time to plan. Bank a unit that runs on paper and keeps students genuinely occupied for that stretch. Ecosystem Management | Biodiversity, Sustainability & Ecological Systems works well there because biodiversity and management decisions generate real argument without equipment, and regional material sits on Mountain West Teaching Resources (ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, WY) for the rest of the year.

How do I stop rebuilding a prep every August?

The second prep is usually the one that gets rebuilt, because it changes when enrollment shifts or a colleague leaves. Rebuilding it from scratch each year is where two preps turn into four, and it is easily the least visible part of the job to anyone who has never taught in a school this size or on this kind of calendar.

Buying the skeleton of one course back is a reasonable trade. Chemistry Complete – Ready-to-Use Curriculum for Middle School Chemistry is a sequenced middle school chemistry curriculum with lessons, student pages and keys, which covers a prep outright and leaves your planning time for the course you actually want to build. Teachers a valley over run the same problem, and Idaho Teaching Resources & Worksheets (Grades K–12) collects what they use.

Frequently asked questions

Are these resources connected to any state education agency?

No. These are independent classroom materials, not affiliated with or endorsed by any state department of education, assessment program or exam authority in the region. Use them alongside whichever content standards your state has adopted, and decide for yourself where each unit belongs in your sequence.

Do these fit a four-day week?

The units are built from discrete activities rather than one continuous thread, which is what makes them workable in longer periods and easier to rejoin after an absence. You can run a lesson as a single extended block or split it, and the printable format does not assume a fixed daily rhythm.

What do I actually get?

Orders are instant downloads holding printable student pages, teacher notes and answer keys, with slide decks on the titles that mention them. Print a set for each prep, or keep the master file on a drive so next year's version starts from something. Refund terms are in the store's refund policy.

Related reading

• Long Drives, Small Schools: Planning in the Mountain West
• What Mountain West Assessment Calendars Have in Common
• Mountain West Teaching Resources (ID, MT, NV, NM, UT, WY)