washington different teaching strategies imposed by schools during the covid19 pandemic resulted in dramatic differences in when and how much students slept according to the findings of a new studythe findings of the study were published in the journal sleepnotably students receiving online instruction without live classes or scheduled teacher interactions woke up the latest and slept the moststudents receiving inperson instruction in schools woke up the earliest and slept the leastbeginning in march 2020 as states and cities imposed lockdowns to prevent the spread of covid19 schools and school districts began to teach children very differentlysome schools retained inperson instruction in school buildings others moved to hybrid instruction some went entirely onlinethere were dramatic differences in scheduling requirements eg specific start time daytoday variability in scheduled instructiononline options also differed some schools required students to sign on to online classes at specific times and interact with teachers directlyother schools did not offer scheduled classes and student work was entirely selfdirectedfrom october 14 to november 26 2020 researchers recruited us adolescents in grades 612 through social media facebook and instagram to examine associations among instructional approaches school start times and sleep during the covid19 pandemicadolescents selected one of three instructional approaches for each weekday monday friday during the previous week inperson onlinesynchronous live online classes or interactions with teachers or onlineasynchronous online but without live classes or scheduled teacher interactionsresearchers received complete sleep outcome data from 5245 adolescents from across the united statesfor inperson instructional days 204 per cent of middle school and 372 per cent of high school students reported getting sufficient sleep at least 9 hours for middle school and at least 8 hours for high schoolfor students taking live online classes 387 per cent of middle school and 569 per cent of high school students reported getting sufficient sleepbut over 62 per cent of middle school and more than 81 per cent of high school students taking courses online without live classes reported getting sufficient sleepstudents in both middle and high school got more sleep if they had later school start timeshowever even when students had the same early start times more students with online courses requiring them to sign in at specific times got sufficient sleep than students receiving inperson instructionwithout the required transportation time or time required to get ready for school in the morning online students were able to wake later and thus get more sleep said lisa meltzer the lead author of the studyfor middle school students a start time of 830 900 inperson or online with live classes resulted in the greatest proportion of students getting enough sleepfor high school students only when the online school day started at 800829 am or later did the percentage of students getting enough sleep exceed 50 per centfor inperson instruction 50 per cent of high school students got enough sleep only when the start time was 900 amhybrid schedules that included at least one day of inperson instruction were associated with the greatest nighttonight