Mixed year classes - can someone help me understand!

[Whatevertheweather]

Right I will try and explain this as succinctly as possible. DD (my first so no prior experience!) is at a school with a 42 intake Reception split in to 2 classes. Class 1 and Class 2. She is Class 2. She is about to move in to a 84 mixed year of yr 1 and yr 2 split over 3 classes so 28 per class. Classes are class 3 4 and 5.

Found out today she is moving in to Class 3 with just 6 other children from her class (2) so presumably the other 21 children in the class are yr2 children. 7 children from class 1 are moving to class 5 where presumably the other 21 children are yr 2. Then there is class 4 which is made up of the remainder of the current reception year (28 children from both class 1 and class 2).

All makes sense so far. One of the other mums said to me today my DD is going to the class as she is bright. Ditto the other children in her class and the 7 going from class 1 to class 5. Which is lovely but this is where I get confused. What happens next year when the majority of her class go to year 3/4. What happens then? Isn't it a bit disruptive to them socially having just got to know a whole group of children in reception to then be in a class knowing only 6 others. Then at the end of that year losing most of those friends to as they move up to yr 3/4.

Also how does the curriculum work presumably if she's in a class where the majority are technically yr2 won't she have done a lot of work by the time she is technically a yr2?

I realise this happens in slot of schools and am sure it does work but I'd just like to understand it a little better. I have tried asking the school/other mums but seem to get differing answers.

Sorry it's so long Hope it makes sense, can't read it back on the iPhone app.

Wow I don't understand much of that but I do know that here classes are divided up by age rather than ability and I'm suprised they are splitting kids up by ability so early.

I'm not sure about next year - will they not just get new kids in to join them? It does seem disruptive though ds's school is similar.

Our village school also has an intake of 42 so does two reception classes then mixed y1/2 (except we have three fully mixed classes so no ability or age splitting). It works well. Or rather it worked well for us and most people seem quite happy once they get their heads around it. Teachers have to differentiate across a wider range - and in our school there is lots of mixing between the three classes across the year bands. DD 1 is quite bright and did well when she was in y1 because she worked with y2 children, so I was slightly concerned what would happen when she went into y2 but then being one of the older ones really boosted her confidence and she had a lovely year.
I don't know what your school will do but ours shuffles classes every year so no issue with the majority moving up. Maybe your school is doing this so she will also be with some children from class 1?
Curriculum - they have 2-year rotations. So if they do the tudors in y1 they do Victorians in y2 and vice versa.

We have mixed age classes at the moment - so 2 reception classes and then three classes for Yr 1 and yr 2 - so there is a Yr 1 class, a Yr 2 class and then a mixed class - ratio depends on numbers but is usually 1/3 younger children and 2/3 older children.

I dont think it is done on ability as such - more like the younger children who are mature enough to be with the older kids - they are often bright and able but also not silly and disruptive and they mix them all around so the two different age groups are sitting together. We have found it great and not noticed any difference in DD ability (she is in Yr 5 so age 10).

At her school they do the same topics over the two age groups - so the history topic could be Romans and so Yr 1 and Yr 2 do that. Also they are split differently for maths - more on ability - so lots of mixing around with both age groups.

It takes a little to get your head round it and all schoold do if slightly differently.

Thank you. I agree I was surprised when they said it was mixed by ability. I thought it would be 3 fully mixed classes not such a small amount being taken out and put in to other classes. It definitely can't be age as out of the birthdays I know of the ones going with my DD birthdays are October, December, March (DD), May and July.

That sounds positive though bigbadbarry as I said I'm sure it will work. It seems to be a really good school. It wasn't our 1st choice initially but I've been really impressed with reception. Our 1st choice was an 85 intake over 3 classes that stayed as 3 classes per year throughout the school - much easier to understand!

X post androbob that's what I thought initially that 28 would make up and yr1 class 28 a yr 2 class then 14 from yr1 and 14 from yr2 in a mixed class. I think I'm thrown as she has ended up with so few of her reception buddies (though luckily her 2 closest friends are with her)

dd's school is made up of mixed classes. The way it works in our school is that all the children are muddled up every year, so that they are moved around within their own peer group as well as up a year group. This is because the number of classes each year is dependent on the number of pupils in the whole school, because funding is based on this figure. Once the school know how much funding they will receive, then they know how many teachers they can afford and then the next year's school structure is worked out based on all of this information.

In our school, just because your child is being put in a class with only a few of her peers next year does not mean that the same will be true the year after, because the children will be re-shuffled again next year depending on the size of the other year group they will be mixed with.

We have had all combinations of classes over the years; R, R/1, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 4/5, 5/6 as well as single year group classes in the mix, but the whole structure of the school changes every year depending on numbers in each year group and the total number in the whole school.

Thank you. I had a very quick word with her teacher this morning and it's definitely been split on ability with the top 7 from each reception class being put in classes with mainly year 2's but she said they will still differentiate the work though in some areas such as literacy DD and her friends may be ahead of some of the yr 2's anyway as they are reading green books already. Still don't really understand what will happen when the rest of her class move to yr 3/4 though.

When they move to Yr3/4 I would imagine it would be the same scenario - a Yr 3 class, a Yr 4 class and a mixed 3/4 class. It would depend on how many kids there are in each year.

My DD was in a mixed yr1/yr 2 class. it seemed to work well. They have the same basic curriculum anyway and work at different levels on their individual tables. The only problem was she made great friends and the next year they went off to juniors and she stayed in the infants playground and they couldn't play anymore.

That's part of my concern socially sandything along with the following year when she's the year 2 group how are they going to manage to stretch those 12 children enough in classes back with their original reception children plus the younger children coming up to yr1.

It just seems to be a system that only works well for 1 year out of 2 i.e. the brighter yr1's in a 1/2 year the yr 3's in a 3/4 year and the yr 5's in a 5/6 year.

at DD1's school they mix classes, for the last two years they have had R R/Y1 Y1/Y2 based on age and it has seemed sensible and worked fairly well

DD2 starts in september & i found out today they are mixing all R/Y1 children so the oldest R & Y1 kids go in one class, the middle R/Y1 kids in another and the youngest r/Y1 kids in a third class?? WTF???? has anyone comes across this before?? My DD2 is one of the older ones so i was prepared for her to be in a mixed class with the younger Y1 next year... but in a class with kids a year older than her????