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Home : 2004 : Jun : 4
Speaking from experience
By Ashley
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I'm a 5th grade science teacher at a school where the students switch for all classes. I can't imagine having 2nd graders switch classes----even my 5th graders are constantly forgetting supplies and their papers. Departmentalizing classes is supposed to increase teaching time in each subject area (or at least, that is the way it is rationalized at my school) but it seems like we waste a lot of time with each group of students in getting them organized at the beginning of class. Each teacher began the year with a box of extra supplies for students so they wouldn't have to go back to their homerooms if they forgot materials. These extras were gone in a heartbeat. Keeping textbooks in a classroom works okay, except that students sometimes need to take their textbooks home to complete classwork or do homework. With practice, you can make the beginning of class go smoothly by either a read-aloud or a quick journal entry. Overall, though, any benefits it might have are outweighed by the chaos switching entails. Plus, we tried to organize the kids by ability level! That meant that kids in my homeroom were in one of four different groups---it totally destroyed homeroom unity. I'm looking forward to tohe day when I return to a self-contained class.
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