This year Wissahickon contracted an inservice speaker, Dr. Harry Wong, to talk to teachers about tricks to get students moving immediately and how to keep them moving. Most teachers have a pre-class on the board that students are to do immediately upon entering class. The teacher takes roll and reviews the pre-class within 2 minutes. Many are so effective with the pre-class that they actually squeeze some minutes from hall time to be added to their class. There is a benefit.
Teachers use more varied teaching styles.
I have yet to see any scientific evidence that this is true. Many teachers have stated that they did not notice any new teaching styles during their observations of block scheduling. Varying activities every 15 minutes or so, cooperative learning, lecture, student presentations, peer tutoring, guided practice, using the library, performing experiments, showing films, using the computer lab, and many other methods are currently being used in our 49 minute periods. I have yet to hear of any new method not currently being used by a Wissahickon teacher. There are no down sides.