Day: March 10, 2017

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BENEFITS OF TEACHING MULTI-AGE GROUPS

Overhead View Of Four Children Playing On Bed Together

Tomorrow I will be teaching children from 7  to 11 years.

It will be like conducting a symphony of carefully chosen learning experiences. To successfully manage this I need to know the curriculum content and I need to know the needs of the children I will be teaching. it takes careful planning but the benefits are HUGE!

There is considerable evidence supporting multi-age grouping for teaching.

“When compared to children in single age classes, children in multi-age classes are superior in study habits, social interaction, self-motivation, cooperation, and attitudes toward school. Academically, children perform just as well or even better than those in single grade classes. (Gajadharsingh 1991). It will take time and effort, but our kids are worth it!”

www.multiage-education.com/multiagen-b/themulticlass.html

We have followed this approach for many years and see many benefits:

  • Teachers teach children at point of need rather than being confined by perceptions of age
  • Children can get access whatever help and teaching they need in flexible groupings
  • More able children tend to be fully extended.
  • Children with difficulties feel more relaxed about accessing much needed assistance and will ask questions more readily.
  • Essentially this approach is modelled on natural family groupings and honours the fact that we grow and mature at different times, sometimes with “spurts” and sometimes more slowly.
  • Teachers who teach in this way tend to develop the ability to be more flexible and use more learning games and “hands-on” equipment.
  • Of course teachers who are new to teaching in these environments need some coaching and modelling in this teaching method. It is like conducting an orchestra and once you know how, you just get better!
  • We believe the educational gains are great so if you have the chance to teach in a multi-age environment, take it! You have much to gain!

Parents who have the chance to enrol children in multi-age classrooms or tuition centres – know your children are experiencing an excellent education mode and likely to have very tangible social and academic gains.

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OVER TESTING LEADS TO UNDER TEACHING

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So now Year Ones are to have a new test to determine who has problems.

By this time of the year Grade One teachers have already identified these youngsters and doing all they can to help them catch-up and have success with basic literacy and numeracy skills.

The money to develop this new test could be used to put extra teacher assistants in the classrooms and purchase adequate teaching resources. (Teachers buy their own!)

Australian kids are over-tested and under-taught!

There are problems that results from this over-testing:

  • Parents naturally worry about the tests and are concerned the results will affect their children’s futures. According to parents, judgements about who can enter certain private schools are sometimes made using NAPLAN results.
  • MANY schools are holding time-consuming NAPLAN coaching sessions for entire classes and teachers who attend our professional development sessions are concerned about this.
  • Every time teachers coach kids to pass a test they are not teaching to the needs of their classes.
  • Students are really worried- we have so many year 3 children who are really frightened of NAPLAN
  • Parents are buying assessments books by the dozen and coaching kids at home. Kids are not getting to play and relax. This leads to stressed kids learning less in classrooms.

NAPLAN has always been a very expensive, ineffective and time wasting stick to try to scare teachers into somehow drilling facts into kids in Dickensian “Hard Times” scenarios.

I had a parent tell me her Pre-Primary son has been identified as at educational risk because he counted to 100 and missed 89 and became mixed up!  This is the result of teacher stress reaching out and affecting children.

We taught this particular child with some extra “hands-on” sessions. He had NO problems at all – in fact his maths intelligence was very strong.

We need to regain our sense of perspective and look at what actually DOES work. We say we do this but Finland is a leading light and they have very little testing.

Singapore is known to be a school system that is reliant on rigorous testing but I am regularly asked by my colleagues there why we have SO MUCH testing in Australia- and yet very little effect!

We need to honour and trust our teachers as professionals and give them the resources and help they need to help ALL youngsters reach their potential!

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