My son is just finishing Kindergarten and will start first grade next fall.
His school just sent home a form describing the three types of first grade classes:
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[li]Traditional single teacher class[/li][li]Team-taught first grade class (two classes together in a large teaching space led by two teachers)[/li][li]1-2 combination class (a two-year program with a mix of first and second graders led by two teachers). It is a two year program where first graders return as the following year’s second graders.[/list=1][/li]There is one team-taught class and two 1-2 combination classes in the school. However, according to the form, we can “opt-out” my son for consideration of placement in these classes.
Does anyone have any experience with the latter two types of classes for elementary school students?
For what it’s worth in my son’s case, he is pretty advanced for Kindergarten. He already reads at about a 2nd grade level, so the combination class is somewhat appealing. (We do not wish him to formally skip a grade, though, due to social reasons.)
Our son was in a combination 2/3 class when he was in second grade, and it was an awful experience. What was particularly disappointing was that it had such potential. In 1st grade, he was at the top of his class, and we were looking forward to 2d grade for him, because he wouldn’t be constrained by the normal 2d grade curriculum and could be challenged by the 3rd grade material, too - or so we thought. It turns out, though, that the teacher only had a couple years of teaching experience, and none at all with combined classes. Neither grade level got her full attention - consequently, kids in BOTH got short-changed. When our son had finished his work, she didn’t assign him more challenging work, she just gave him MORE of the same stuff he’d been doing. He saw that it was pointless, and developed bad habits he’s still trying to unlearn, four years later.
Combined classes can work, but our observation is that they require a very experienced and knowledgeable teacher. We didn’t have that.
Composite classes can be excellent, especially for advanced learners but it depends on the experience of the teacher. I’ve seen it work wonderfully and horribly. One very important question to ask is what happens if my kid is moved into the grade 2 reading group in year one – what plans are in place for the following year? You can end up doing default acceleration because there’s nowhere for the kid to go except up into the next level or they end up re-doing the same old work.
I don’t like team-taught classes when you’ve got a lot of kids in the classroom. What are the noise levels going to be like?
I was in a class like this 3d-6th grade. A long time ago when it must have been very experimental (1979?-82?) It was really pretty cool-- for the elective sorts of activities (around holidays, etc) one has more of a chance to get to do something that is interesting. I also liked having the variety of teachers and student ages around me (we were prolly 60 kids, 4 grades, I think 4 teachers, and we would rotate through the teachers over the course of the day as ‘stations’, which was nice prep for junior high and beyond (you took math with the math teacher). In some ‘classes’ (like science) everybody would be working on the same study unit which wasn’t really grade specific, like simple machines or something-- same with social studies (“Africa” this month, handicaps the next), so if a couple of 5th graders were on the same level of math as some 3d graders it worked out ok, group-wise. There wasn’t a real sense of ‘grade’, as far as ahead/behind-- didn’t seem to be much stigma to being a 5th grader in the same math group as a couple of 3d graders. And then 7th grade in a regular set of classes at the junior high allowed for a range of skill, anyway.
Physically it was a very big room (most of that floor of the building) divided up by naturalized partitions (bookcases, cubbies (as substitute for personalised desks, which we couldn’t have given the nature of the beast), chalkboards) and it wasn’t too loud. At certain times of day (morning and end meetings) everyone in the class would sit together for a bit.
It did mesh awkwardly at points with the rest of the school (smallish school-- 2 classes for each grade up to third, then from there on there was one class per grade plus “Open Class”, so on the day when all 4th graders went to the library the open class 4th graders would get yanked out of this and that group but could mingle with the regular 4th graders. For some reason I only had a few friends in my grade but a lot of friends in the grades above and below me, which was probably a bit differet, socially.
This is interesting to reflect on-- something I hadn’t thought about in years and in retrospect I think it was fantastic for me. I have an identical twin sister and they had always tried to put in separate classes to simplify things (after a set of confused and traumatising events early in kindergarten) but in the 2 years we were both in open class (she was in the regular class the other 2) we were tracked differently enough so there wasn’t the usual confusion.
My sister was in a 2nd/3rd grade combination class for second grade. She loved it. However, I think that our school carefully considered who was going to be in that class and when. (For example, she was not in that class in 3rd grade, and I think it would have been rare for a kid to be in that class two years. Also, I was not in that class–I believe that they started offering it when I was in 3rd grade.)
I think that it worked well because of the teacher, who I know was one of her favorites (I was kind of sad that she was chosen for that class because she missed out on my favorite teacher!) Also, the older kids often helped the younger ones–I think that helped keep them from being bored.
In the district where I went to high school, they offered an “ungraded” class in elementary school that sounds a lot like the one capybara took. I heard good things about that from my classmates who had been in that, so I think that it can work if done right.