Teaching Multi-grade (Long)

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Home : 2004 : September : 24

Teaching Multi-grade (Long)
By Kathy

I teach in a private school so my situation is definitely different than yours, but perhaps some things from my experience may help. My first year at my current school I taught 22 students in grades 1-4 and was "head teacher"
(aka principal of the school) I was an experienced teacher, but it was still overwheming. (Though it was my 16th year of teaching, I had never taught more than one grade in a room and had no experience in administration.)
My salvation was an excellent aide. I still felt that I cheated the children academically. (Though they all seem to be doing well seven years later!!)
Fortunately

I just had that one year with 4 grades. I taught 3 grades for two years and have been teaching grades 3 and 4 since. (I love that two grade conbination--It's so much fun to teach children a second year and see their growth.)

I do feel that you need an aide (or at least volunteer help) in your situation. See if you can get the Board to agree to one since they must be saving money by cutting a teacher.

What I did curriculum wise was to combine as many classes as feasible. Whenever I could I taught everyone together. Social studies and science we did with the grade 3 and 4 books and I would just modify the activities for the younger grades.
Writing also is something that each student can take at his/her own level.

I took my social studies and science curriculum and developed units that we did each month. I still alternate between social studies and science and teach only one each quarter. (It's easier to focus that way and we study the same curriculum--just in more depth at one time.)

Try to integrate as much as you can into your monthly unit. For instance, if you are teaching the Oregon Trail, choose a book on the subject to read aloud to the students, choose others to use as literature sets for reading, do art and music in the same theme. You get the idea. The internet is a wealth of information on almost any subject.

There's really no way to get around teaching separate math to each grade. Although with 3-4 (which I've taught for several years now) I often will do "group work" with them before delving into their actual individual lessons.

Even in math see if you can get by with clustering units. (For example, if you're teaching fractions--have everyone work on that concept. Maybe do an art activity with fractions that week.)

If you can, try not to teach a separate math class to each grade every day. Some lessons teach a new concept, others are more reinforcement. So balance which class you are going to spend the most time with each day.

Another thing that helped me was to cluster kids according to ability rather than grade. (For example, children from various grades might be working on a literature set togehter.) A multi-grade classroom can actually be a learning benefit for those children that need reinforcement or enrichment. The less you can focus on grades (such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and the more you focus on a learning community the easier it is. (Although even then, it's never "easy!!")

I also found it invaluable to cluster the students' desks in groups. I made sure I mixed up older and younger children. In this way it was easier to do cross-age tutoring. Educate your students on the best way to "teach" if someone is having a problem. (Show them telling the answers is not really helping.) Model, model, model. Then let them help each other.

Brains-based research indicates that the best way for someone to learn something is to teach it to someone else. So just consider your whole class a learning lab where everyone at one time or another will take on the role of teacher or learner.

Good luck! You can do it!!