Just For The Record....

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Home : 2007 : March : 31

Just For The Record....
By tia

my suggestion was not to have a high class and a low class--i do not believe in tracking. i believe in flexible grouping, as we do at my grade level. we have students capable of high school-level work all the way down to
students doing first grade work (in a sixth grade classroom)--even our "average" kids are extremely diverse!

before each math unit, we pretest (or look at other data) and group students for those particular skills---this grouping is fluid and kids constantly change from the "high" group to the "low" group--and of course, we don't refer to them this way.

we have our own

students for 30 minutes of direct instruction on reading skills, then they are broken up into 6 groups, based on reading ability--figured out by looking at state test scores, WPM, STAR, our basal pretest, and professional judgment. (we are EXTREMELY lucky to have several helpers with this period---we only are able to have this many groups--16 in the largest one, 4-8 in the others--because we are a Title One school with that assistance, along with a Read Right program, and our grade level has the most IEP's, ELL's, and BAD behaviors--so we were given priority.) These groups, for the most part are centered around our new basal that has us working with whole group to explain skills and then gives students books to read--at their level--using same comprehension strategies, vocabulary, and theme. our groups were pretty well put together--we made a couple changes a few weeks ago--several kids moved up from a few groups, and 2 kids moved down.

i believe a mixed-ability classroom is great, but it's extremely difficult for one teacher to teach everyone--i don't care HOW good you are at differentiating! there is no way i could teach my advanced kids while having my 6.7 reading kids read, have my 4.0 kids working, and be helping my one kid with asperger's stay focused while helping the one kid who can barely read get through his work.

so perhaps that explains my suggestion better---use the aide to work with a group of similarly-skilled students so you can focus on the others.