sorting classes according to ability

[creamandsugar]

Hi, dont know if this is normal but
Speaking to my dds teacher this morning,she's still only in Montessori going to primary school attached in Sept,that they are sorting the class into levels . There are 3 separate classes per year and from what I understood that the weakest students will be in one, medium in another etc.

This seems really wrong! At such a young age,some aren't even 5!!
Aibu?

Wrong in my view. Ability is so fluid in young children, it's too early to assess them properly at this age. Also, it's good for them to learn to work with children of varying abilities.

My dd has always been on the "top table" at school. There is a very wide range of ability in her class. The teachers have always managed to cater for children of all abilities in their teaching.

Stupid idea. In-class differentiation is essential, and OFSTED will expect to see this happening, but streaming is damaging.

DD2's primary manages differentiation up to and including Yr6 - there is no dumbing down, just children being helped to reach their potential.

I've been teaching for over 30 years and never ever known a state primary do this. It is very wrong. Are you sure this is what they are doing?

'That's the problem with setting - benefits the brightest (who already have a head start) and puts everybody else at a disadvantage'

so why should the brighter kids be disadvantaged to bring on the thicker kids?
My kids go to a small village primary, and for years I helped 2 mornings a week in the infants class.I could predict with more than 90% accuracy which reception children would pass the 11+ (which in this area is aassessed on VR and NVR) in year 6.
Not by whether they could read or not, or write stories.some have really good ideas and can pick things up quickly.

so why should the brighter kids be disadvantaged to bring on the thicker kids?

Thicker kids?

My dd has actually learnt a lot from explaining things to her less academically oriented peers. Not least, she has learnt that everyone has different areas of strength and weakness, and that each child has something special that they can share with others, no matter what that might be.

Horrible post sunshinecity17

Your 'thicker kids' comment is vile for a start. Putting that aside though, we are talking about 5 yr old children here. Some will be just 5, some almost 6.
How can anyone justify streaming at this age?

Ds3's school did this when he was in yr 2 Tinpin
They had two classes...one for the 'more able' children and one for the children who benefited from working at a slower pace (or words to that effect).
It was a stand alone infant school, and I think the reasoning behind it was to get as many children as possible achieving level 3 at the end of Ks1.

so why should the brighter kids be disadvantaged to bring on the thicker kids?

Wow! That is one horrible attitude you have there.

The worrying thing is hazey, for years she apparently helped out two mornings a week in the infants class

These days there is little between the research that says yay or nay. It depends more on the responsiveness and accurate speed of changing support/streamed groups that makes the biggest difference - but there are few gold standard publications on that.

I work in FE, my sister in Primary and we both mix up our setted groups to allow for later, differentiated groups/lessons. Our start point will always depend on the size/ability mix of the groups and also the resources to hand for supporting (TAs, rooms, LSAs etc).

If we can shift them round quickly then we will set them in same ability groups, that way we can scaffold the less able more securely before moving them on/up. The top set get a chance to learn how to tackle the stretch and challenge tasks before they realise that not everyone will be doing them. We aim to end up with confident, self supporting mixed ability, well differentiated groups.

You will need to check back and see how/if the set mix is being changed as the kids grow. If they don't then scream and holler, often and as far up the food chain as you need to go!

Evidence shows that even the most able benefit from ability grouping
really?, I can find lots of evidence that states the contrary .

OK sunshinecity17. Gauntlet is down.

Link here to 3 peer reviewed research papers which state that streaming children accelerates their progress.

Some kids click in year one or two and fly past the original top set!

This. My DDs started Reception at the top end of average in reading. DD1 made her leap at the beginning of YR1, DD2 halfway through Reception - they both leapt streets past the then top set kids and then stayed there. Who knows what would have happened if they had been streamed and more or less written off?

DD2 was middling in maths until the middle of Yr3 and then it clicked - she sat the L6 tests this year. Without flexibility and in-class differentiation by attentive teachers, that would definitely not have happened.

Going to ask teacher tomorrow again. How would I put it so they don't feel threatened as such. Don't want to spit it out Do you stream the class according to intelligence and or ability????
Just a nice way of saying the same thing? Any ideas?

I would just say 'Please can you explain to me how you organise the class lists'.

They won't be threatened, they must have been asked a million times. If they do something so controversial year after year they will have been grilled before will have a slick explanation.

CharlesRyder, sunshinecity said that there was evidence to show the contrary of "even the most able benefit from ability grouping" -- i.e. evidence to show that even the most able do not benefit from ability grouping. So I don't see where challenging her to cite papers showing that they do benefit fits into that.

(I'm not sure whether the original quote from odyssey2001 was a typo, as "only the most able benefit" would fit better into her post)

Difficult. I know DC whose confidence was shot to pieces by being placed in the "high ability" (early readers) class in the first year of primary at DD's school when they failed to keep up. Quite a few DC in that class had been coached by pushy parents. Now, four years later, it is clear that there is no correlation between DC who were in the early reading class and top performers in the year group. Indeed, there may even be an inverse correlation.

Our primary used to have 2 classes, mixed ability, for most things. But then shifting for maths/literacy into two sets.

New head did away with the setting in this manner two years ago. Now they are taught in mixed ability classes for everything, though on different tables.

It is much more fluid. A child struggling at the beginning of the year with a particular mathmatical concept is not consigned to a class for the year where his strengths aren't taught to. You don't have the set up where some children sit naturally on the top of their set but can't move up because of numbers, and vice versa.

Results have gone up in ks1 where the children have been taught this way from the beginning, and the impact is showing in ks2 too, where children were originally taught in setted classes.

The head's view was that it was old fashioned, divisive and unfair for children to be setted in the old way. There was some resistance at first from the parents of the children who were higher achievers who were concerned about them being stretched. But the answer really is having high quality teaching. A good teacher with good, well trained TA support, will be able to teach mixed abilities very well. Some staff left and have been replaced by excellent teachers capable of teaching a mixed ability class well.

I'm all for children being taught in classes according to ability, but then that's because my children were always at the top of the class at primary school. I appreciate I may well feel differently if they weren't.

I can see that streaming doesn't do any favours to the children who are struggling, but other children don't go to school to help the bottom ones. The ones at the top should be given as much chance to achieve their full potential as possible, and for them, it's better that they are in a class with children of a similar ability.

It's not fair on the children who have the highest ability to be in a mixed class when although they might get slightly harder work to do, the TA and teacher support is nearly all directed at those in the middle and the bottom. And that happens a lot. In a class with only one TA, it will make sense that the teacher uses her TA to support the children who are struggling the most, so while that's ok for them, it penalises the ones at the top.

While the research supports streaming, I wonder about the reality.

Here goes: the middle stream really comes on, and 7 out of 30 at the end of term 2 are up to the level of the top stream. BUT, only 3 of the top stream haven't kept up. Will those 7 be sent to the top stream, the 3 down, to make it 34 in the top stream?

No would be my guess.

I wonder about the staffing of streaming too, as it it's made very clear that this only works if you put tip-top staff ( plus support) in those lower streams.

Come on...we are talking about 5 year olds here. It is much too early to talk about separating on ability. So much can change in those early years.

The talk of 5 year olds holding back other 5 year olds and ruining their education is ridiculous.