Should children be put in ability sets?
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ANDREW THE POET
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Hi there …
I suppose that what I’m saying is that education suffers from ‘trends’ and the trend for the last few generations of children has been to ‘teach’ half-a-dozen levels simultaneously. In practice, you can’t keep track of so many different activities – at least not without compromising the quality of what you as a teacher are trying to do. You can’t honestly measure every child’s progress (or lack of) with any sense of accuracy in such an environment. I suppose you could say I was in favour of ‘chalk and talk’ with the learning directed from the front via the teacher. I think this should be the case for core subjects with loads of scope left over for group activities. So, the answer is to use a number of different approaches.
The ‘norm’ in primary schools seems to be to have children facing one another with a variety of tasks left for them to sample and work through at their own pace free to chat to others around them. It’s a gentle approach to learning, but not one to be used day in and day out. Children love to be stretched and challenged. Statistically a teacher can only spend a moment with every child when having to flit around the classroom where there is so much going on. If, however, the teacher is at the front teaching ONE area she/he is in charge of the learning process. Equally, in follow-up work there is a clear yardstick to measure the success or failure of what has been taught. It’s only in the UK that we have this obsession with differentiation within the classes themselves. We’re terrified of labelling children by putting them into ‘special’ classes. However, we’re doing them a much greater injustice by not providing them with the skills they need for life.
Sorry, I can be quite verbose so I hope I’m making sense. Clearly I have no life as I’m writing this on Saturday night!
Andrew
I suppose that what I’m saying is that education suffers from ‘trends’ and the trend for the last few generations of children has been to ‘teach’ half-a-dozen levels simultaneously. In practice, you can’t keep track of so many different activities – at least not without compromising the quality of what you as a teacher are trying to do. You can’t honestly measure every child’s progress (or lack of) with any sense of accuracy in such an environment. I suppose you could say I was in favour of ‘chalk and talk’ with the learning directed from the front via the teacher. I think this should be the case for core subjects with loads of scope left over for group activities. So, the answer is to use a number of different approaches.
The ‘norm’ in primary schools seems to be to have children facing one another with a variety of tasks left for them to sample and work through at their own pace free to chat to others around them. It’s a gentle approach to learning, but not one to be used day in and day out. Children love to be stretched and challenged. Statistically a teacher can only spend a moment with every child when having to flit around the classroom where there is so much going on. If, however, the teacher is at the front teaching ONE area she/he is in charge of the learning process. Equally, in follow-up work there is a clear yardstick to measure the success or failure of what has been taught. It’s only in the UK that we have this obsession with differentiation within the classes themselves. We’re terrified of labelling children by putting them into ‘special’ classes. However, we’re doing them a much greater injustice by not providing them with the skills they need for life.
Sorry, I can be quite verbose so I hope I’m making sense. Clearly I have no life as I’m writing this on Saturday night!
Andrew
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ANDREW THE POET
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 9:49 pm
- Location: Spalding, Lincolnshire
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Guest
Hi,
I think we want to hear more! Are you saying that primaries should be streamed? This could be difficult in small primaries, though I have heard of very small schools where children are taught according to ability, rather than according to age. So in theory, you could have a reception child taught alongside a Year 6 child.
I think we're all interested!!
I think we want to hear more! Are you saying that primaries should be streamed? This could be difficult in small primaries, though I have heard of very small schools where children are taught according to ability, rather than according to age. So in theory, you could have a reception child taught alongside a Year 6 child.
I think we're all interested!!
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Guest
In other countries brighter children are put into the next years sets, or even the year above that for subjects. This is a type of setting, which meets the child's abilities.
In the states a friend in Florida advised that they sit end of year exams. If they don't pass they have to retake the year again with the younger children.
Other countries cater for the brighter children, as well as the not so. I think we are one of the only countries who use most of our resources on the not so.
Until things drastically change the few parents that care enough about their child's education will carry on by themselves and stumble across sites like this.
I also did a LSA course, and agree wholeheartedly with Andrew, In theory it's great but in reality it just doesn't happen.
Whilst doing my training I was amazed to hear the teacher getting angry, and then complaining about 'these ungrateful children, who don't have a clue about how much time she puts into preparing a lesson'. The children she was annoyed with, were the top 2-3 who had all finished the set task much earlier than their peers and were then told to go and find a book to read. They inevitably got bored and started chatting and messing around. No extension work had been thought about for these kids. Makes you wonder in how many classes throughout the country this scene is replayed
In the states a friend in Florida advised that they sit end of year exams. If they don't pass they have to retake the year again with the younger children.
Other countries cater for the brighter children, as well as the not so. I think we are one of the only countries who use most of our resources on the not so.
Until things drastically change the few parents that care enough about their child's education will carry on by themselves and stumble across sites like this.
I also did a LSA course, and agree wholeheartedly with Andrew, In theory it's great but in reality it just doesn't happen.
Whilst doing my training I was amazed to hear the teacher getting angry, and then complaining about 'these ungrateful children, who don't have a clue about how much time she puts into preparing a lesson'. The children she was annoyed with, were the top 2-3 who had all finished the set task much earlier than their peers and were then told to go and find a book to read. They inevitably got bored and started chatting and messing around. No extension work had been thought about for these kids. Makes you wonder in how many classes throughout the country this scene is replayed
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ANDREW THE POET
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 9:49 pm
- Location: Spalding, Lincolnshire
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Thanks for the broad agreement regarding my own feelings on this issue. I'm no great fan of allowing children to plod along at their own pace. If this approach was working then we wouldn't have such poor literacy skills amongst our youngsters. After 7 years of full-time education NO child should leave school without being a confident in the spoken and written word of their mother tongue. I visit schools every week (about 900 in the last 10 years) and am frustrated by so much of what I see. My own son, now year six, has only achieved as I decided to home-tutor him at weekends and through holidays. Being a 'good' child his problems were rarely identified. So, YES! Let's have children in classes suited to their abilities. In theory, you could have R with Yr 6, but such a situation wouldn't arise if the school were able to identify his/her problem and deal with this lower down the school. There would still be loads of time left in the primary curriculum to deliver the creative/fun stuff!
On ANOTHER issue, schools are trying to 'get back to basics' through the literacy hour by frog-marching children through the jargon of grammar well before they are ready. This in itself is enough to turn children OFF reading. I see primary schools plastered with adult phrases pasted from the curriculum documents. Post-14 work is being dished-up in primaries before the children have even begun to tackle the basics. No wonder pupils are turned-off in lessons - particularly with the teaching approaches as discussed.
PS ... you nice 'guest' folk, it would be good to have a name for each one of you, then I know whom I 'talking' to.
NOW THAT REALLY IS ENOUGH OF MY RANTING!
Andrew
On ANOTHER issue, schools are trying to 'get back to basics' through the literacy hour by frog-marching children through the jargon of grammar well before they are ready. This in itself is enough to turn children OFF reading. I see primary schools plastered with adult phrases pasted from the curriculum documents. Post-14 work is being dished-up in primaries before the children have even begun to tackle the basics. No wonder pupils are turned-off in lessons - particularly with the teaching approaches as discussed.
PS ... you nice 'guest' folk, it would be good to have a name for each one of you, then I know whom I 'talking' to.
NOW THAT REALLY IS ENOUGH OF MY RANTING!
Andrew
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Bewildered
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- Joined: Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:29 pm
- Location: Berkshire
Sorry Andrew, that was me, agreeing with you. Too lazy to log in 
Yes again I agree with you on your last point too. As a governor observing LSA's helping children that were being given extra English aid, I observed exactly what you described. This was a couple of years back, and with year 1 children. The poor LSA's had to teach these children, a group of about 6, verbatim out of an Extended Literacy Standards booklet. They were using a lot of technical words, such as connectives, cues, phonemes etc during the lesson. When I queried this, they advised that this was exactly how they had been instructed to teach the work, and voiced there own frustrated opinion on the subject. It would of put a grown up to sleep!!!! How are the poor children supposed to remember the basics, when they get hit with a whole host of jargon to decipher
BW
Yes again I agree with you on your last point too. As a governor observing LSA's helping children that were being given extra English aid, I observed exactly what you described. This was a couple of years back, and with year 1 children. The poor LSA's had to teach these children, a group of about 6, verbatim out of an Extended Literacy Standards booklet. They were using a lot of technical words, such as connectives, cues, phonemes etc during the lesson. When I queried this, they advised that this was exactly how they had been instructed to teach the work, and voiced there own frustrated opinion on the subject. It would of put a grown up to sleep!!!! How are the poor children supposed to remember the basics, when they get hit with a whole host of jargon to decipher
BW
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ANDREW THE POET
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 9:49 pm
- Location: Spalding, Lincolnshire
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Thank you 'Bewildered'. Yes, the primary literary curriculum is littered with jargon. Teachers are merely anxious to tick through their checklist in order to be seen to have covered the curriculum. It all makes for a very clinical learning environment. Learning in the primary school should be fun and dynamic - hence my own career. I'd love to get back into the classroom as a teacher again, but fear my own approach would be greatly at odds with the 'new order'.
Thanks for the post!
Andrew
Thanks for the post!
Andrew
My children's primary school is about to reorganise its class structure because of falling rolls - we were sent a questionnaire asking whether we would prefer to keep all mixed year classes as at present or to have a form of streaming across two years - thus for year 5 and 6 there would be:
1X pure year 6 class (for more able half of the year 6)
2X mixed year 5/6 classes (more able year 5 and less able year 6)
1X pure year 5 class (less able year 5)
and so on down the school.
The vast majority of parents opted for the second system. Having seen the poor teachers struggle with the huge range of abilities in mixed year classes, which were sometimes very large in the middle years, I too thought the new system might be better. But since sending the form back I am much less sure!
It seems there are a number of drawbacks to this sort of streaming:
Children develop at different rates and times and year 1 seems very early to start to stream;
There is little flexibility and space for movement between classes whereas there was plenty of scope for movement between maths sets and "tables" in the class;
What about the children who are really strong in one area but weak in another?
What about children with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia who may find reading/writing very difficult but be very bright and need the stimulation of a fast pace?
Don't know what the ideal solution is.
Could not agree more with the comments about the jargon-ridden literacy lessons. It all seems so formulaic - each piece of writing has a "tick list" of so many embedded clauses, so many adverbs, so many alliterative phrases etc etc - what ever happened to the joy of creativity?
1X pure year 6 class (for more able half of the year 6)
2X mixed year 5/6 classes (more able year 5 and less able year 6)
1X pure year 5 class (less able year 5)
and so on down the school.
The vast majority of parents opted for the second system. Having seen the poor teachers struggle with the huge range of abilities in mixed year classes, which were sometimes very large in the middle years, I too thought the new system might be better. But since sending the form back I am much less sure!
It seems there are a number of drawbacks to this sort of streaming:
Children develop at different rates and times and year 1 seems very early to start to stream;
There is little flexibility and space for movement between classes whereas there was plenty of scope for movement between maths sets and "tables" in the class;
What about the children who are really strong in one area but weak in another?
What about children with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia who may find reading/writing very difficult but be very bright and need the stimulation of a fast pace?
Don't know what the ideal solution is.
Could not agree more with the comments about the jargon-ridden literacy lessons. It all seems so formulaic - each piece of writing has a "tick list" of so many embedded clauses, so many adverbs, so many alliterative phrases etc etc - what ever happened to the joy of creativity?
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ANDREW THE POET
- Posts: 33
- Joined: Sat Jan 27, 2007 9:49 pm
- Location: Spalding, Lincolnshire
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Hi there Alex!
It’s a long time since we had a ‘chat’. Hope you’re well. I take your points entirely regarding the drawbacks of streaming – particularly in a small school. However, there’s a consensus that the present system doesn’t deliver. Beyond one-to-one I guess any teaching approach will have its limitations. (Although one-to-one is rarely sufficient)
Re your points, here’s how I see things!
If handled correctly, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be movement between different classes of ability. Children are naturally competitive and would have something to aim for. If handled sensitively then this should work.
My own son is strong in numeracy and weak in literacy so is in different groups. If you stream by subject then this should not be a problem.
The issue of dyslexia where you have bright children with specific weaknesses is a bit more tricky to address. However, I would suggest that in the process of streaming the real talents and abilities of children would become much more transparent. In this way provision could be made on an informed basis as to appropriate methods for special needs children.
Enough of me!
Andrew
It’s a long time since we had a ‘chat’. Hope you’re well. I take your points entirely regarding the drawbacks of streaming – particularly in a small school. However, there’s a consensus that the present system doesn’t deliver. Beyond one-to-one I guess any teaching approach will have its limitations. (Although one-to-one is rarely sufficient)
Re your points, here’s how I see things!
If handled correctly, I don’t see why there shouldn’t be movement between different classes of ability. Children are naturally competitive and would have something to aim for. If handled sensitively then this should work.
My own son is strong in numeracy and weak in literacy so is in different groups. If you stream by subject then this should not be a problem.
The issue of dyslexia where you have bright children with specific weaknesses is a bit more tricky to address. However, I would suggest that in the process of streaming the real talents and abilities of children would become much more transparent. In this way provision could be made on an informed basis as to appropriate methods for special needs children.
Enough of me!
Andrew
