Views on ability groups

[averywoomummy]

Having just read the thread about summer borns and having done a bit of reasearch on the internet about ability groups I was just wondering what people's views were on them.

Personally I am quite worried about how they are used at DCs school and wonder if I am right to be so. The thing is I could understand if they sat at mixed tables and then went into separate groups for maths etc but in DCs class they sit in their ability group for the majority of the time - even doing crafts within their group. This seems to very much fix them in their ability band and they don't get the chance to work with children of different abilities and share knowledge.

This also means the groups are very obvious and as they use the same names year in year out parents instantly know what group their child and others are in.

It also concerns me that it is a small classroom with a fixed number on each table and so for a child to move up - another has to move down (and vice versa) this doesn't seem right as surely children's development is very fluid and just because one is ready to move up doesn't mean that at the same time another child is ready to move down. It also seems quite divisive as children could perceive their place has been "taken".

As DC is in a lower group I also worry about her learning being capped and I think that even if she is capable of a bit more she may not be encouraged to do it. I worry that the lower group will start to see themselves as not so capable and that it will become a self fulfilling prophesy.

I can understand differentiation of work but does it have to be so obvious?!

Really interested to hear others opinions of how this has worked for their DCs - also how does a class with no grouping work?

I teach Y5 these days, and I use that type of 'didactic conversation' task not infrequently, perhaps when revising a partcular method in Maths, or between pairs who have attempted a problem solving exercise in very different ways. Or following research about a topic, where I have shared the research areas across the class so that each 'expert' then has to report back to a wider group. But the key thing is that all children get to share their expertise, it's not 'oh, you've finished, go and help that child over there'.

I think another danger of ability grouping in a very fixed way is the risk of putting children into a group that is simply a "best fit" for them rather than one which really suits their individual ability.

For example DC's class has 5 tables with 6 places each, for a child to move up or down a child on the next table has to move too. I doubt that the children came conveniently packaged into 5 groups with totally similar abilities, and if the teacher really wanted to truly work to ability then shouldn't the groups be more flexible? You might end up with 7 in one group, 3 in another and 15 in another.

As it is it seems as though the teacher has simply graded the children from 1 - 30 and then placed them on the tables in descending order. In practice this probably means that there is not a huge gulf of difference between the top child on one table and the bottom child on the next table up and yet there will be a difference in how they are taught and how they can access education. This doesn't seem right to me.

laqueen you are right that there is nothing wrong with you wanting what is best for your child but parents with children placed on lower ability tables also want what is best for their child. The trouble is that at the moment those things seem to be mutually exclusive. What pleases the parents with DC on the top table doesn't please those with DC on the bottom table and vice versa - I don't know what the answer is to that?

mrz "For thousands of years, people have known that the best way to understand a concept is to explain it to someone else. “While we teach, we learn,” said the Roman philosopher Seneca. Now scientists are bringing this ancient wisdom up to date, documenting exactly why teaching is such a fruitful way to learn — and designing innovative ways for young people to engage in instruction."

And thousands of years ago, my teacher used to 'differentiate' by getting me to teach maths to those who needed it - I was, essentially, a 9 year-old classroom assistant come maths lessons.

Explaining things to others can be a useful exercise, and it taught me a lot about how to present ideas. I didn't learn any maths though; I went over a year at primary school without learning anything at all in maths in fact, because I'd been allowed to work ahead one year and then ended up doing literally the same work again the following year (and teaching the others)

I'm sorry you had a teacher who didn't know how to challenge you in class.

I don't think that explaining ideas to others is necessarily teaching my DD more maths. But FWIW, she really enjoys it when she has finished her work and goes to work on a different table or pairs up with another child who has finished so they can both explain what they've done to each other. She is not a TA, unpaid or otherwise! She is 7 and hasn't got the skills to perform that task. I do know that she has often volunteered to go onto a different table after finishing her work instead of going off to do junk modelling or whatever because she likes working and she likes talking about her work. I am the recipient of much talking about her work at home and quite honestly sometimes I think it's an excellent thing that she gets an opportunity to do so at school and maybe gets a bit of it out of her system because sometimes quite often I don't really want to talk about the 22 times table and number patterns for hours.

I do think that her teacher is sometimes at a loss to challenge her much and I do think maybe if she wasn't in the 'top' group and her teachers weren't assuming that she was sufficiently challenged by virtue of doing the hardest task, they might be more inclined to give her a bit more to do. However, she likes school, she loves learning, she is doing just fine and really, there isn't much wrong with being a bit bored on occasion. It's not a bad thing to learn to cope with and if her way of coping with it is to spray her love of maths or writing or whatever all over the classroom to whoever will listen, then that's kind of OK (I hope her enthusiasm might be at least amusing for others). I think it might get harder as the year goes on (Y2). She's already working at a high level 3 in reading, writing and maths and I think maybe that having achieved all that is really hoped for in this year so early might prove difficult as time goes on. I also hope I'm wrong about that.

I absolutely agree with having ability groups from early on, I have 2 DCs who would have been poles apart if were in the same class so it would not have benefitted either of them to be given the same work.

However, to have fixed number groups etc is ridiculous, at DS1s infant school and now at his junior school they have very 'moveable' groups. The children, even in Y1 and 2, are fully aware roughly where their group sits as it was pointed out to me by a couple of Y2 children that they know which is the top group (even though it is a colour or shape) as it has the clever children in.

At his current junior school there are 4 in the top group, 8 in the middle (split into 2 sub groups) and 6 in the lower group. The names are on blu tack and can/do move. This was the same at the infant school (totally separate school).

A mum at DS2s school insists it is disgraceful her DD was in a bottom group and got additional help for reading, she said her DD hated it as she was with the thick children (I was livid as that is plain nasty and DS2 was also in that group early on and he was just not very confident so needed to be in that group). She said they should just be in one big group and do exactly the same, my arguement to her was that how was that beneficial to our DCs or to DSs friend who was reading Roald Dahl books at that point in reception. Both of the children have actually moved up several groups so I think it must have worked for them.

I understand not everyone agrees with it of course and if it is too rigid then it can't possibly work.

I should also say that the ability groups at DS1s school do not necessarily mean they all do the same work, in DSs group they often split into 2 x 2, it is more a general grouping where they may have harder spellings, tests, tables and so on, also they would get the same homework.

Also it has just come to mind that DS1s last teacher at infant school did not differenciate within ability groups which caused lots of issues also, it must go hand in hand still IMO.

My DD (now year 8 -secondary school) was in top sets all through primary. From what I understand they were not very fluid and children rarely moved up or down.

I have friends from the school who were unhappy because they felt no matter how well their children worked they never progressed and moved up sets.

Some of my friends children seem to have now flourished at secondary school.

My DD who is still in top sets at secondary has commented many times how quite a few of the "very clever children" were moved down sets as early as the first term in year 7 and other children from the lower sets at primary have moved up.

My summer born DD is in the lower sets now. I would have been worried but not so much as they will be assessed at secondary school.

From my experience setting in primary is not always an accurate measure of ability.

Also my friend's DS is in the same year group (primary) as my DD. He is in top set. She showed me his homework the other day as he was very upset and could not understand it.

My DD knew how to do it. However she is very quiet and shy at school so blends into the background.

I think the last few pages of this discussion beautifully illustrate the problem.

For the teacher - teaching as much as 30 pupils - getting to know individuals in the kind of detail we might as parents is difficult. It's what 12 weeks into the first term and realistically for reading, for example, they've had 60 hours with all 30 children - so in theory 2 hours per child - but we know that individual reading with the teacher is probably more limited.

The solution seems to be optional SATs at the end of term (at least at our school) - and the result is that the performance on these tests is what determines which table my DDs are assigned to.

I'm now in the situation of DD2 (2nd table for reading) having come home and said she had a difficult test - a reading about a Liverpool Lad - but she didn't understand what Liverpool meant and there was a question asking what two boys thought of the Liverpool Lad - and she couldn't work out who he was. (DD2 is 8 by the way).

I said sweetie did one of the boys say things in the story a bit differently from you?

Yes, Mummy - there was one who said funny words like 'nowt'.

Sweetie it's kind of like Hagrid in Harry Potter - you know how he sounds different from everybody else or Mrs. McGonaggal - and how she sounds different. They're speaking with a Scottish accent and using words from there - which is called dialect.

DH picked up on this conversation - and asked how many questions were on this paper sweetie? Maybe 10 she responded. How many did you answer? Not many because I couldn't work out who the Liverpool Lad was and kept reading the story over and over. 'They just didn't use those words anywhere in the story Daddy' - and then bursting into tears.

I said never mind sweetie. You go upstairs and have a play with your sister. DH & I discussed all this and I've bet DH £50 (because I'm certain) DD2 is moved down a group having been tested on something she doesn't understand - most likely taught to the class on the days she was away on an approved absence. (and missed material, although requested, was not supplied by her teachers).

For which I read: This is the school making the point that missing class results in 'loss of learning'.

And that sums up my problem with the school - most new concepts are taught miraculously whilst DD2 is out of class. New maths concepts are introduced mid-week whilst out at violin lessons, she comes in mid-lesson and has no idea what's going on and nobody explains it to her and clearly learning about dialects within England/ Britain was taught whilst we were away.

Again, if teachers were truly 'professionals' - they should be more than able to photocopy a text provide a few notes saying we're introducing the concept of dialect now Mrs. PSBD - could you go through this in your nightly reading with DD2 - and I would have. Instead - it's far better to say nothing & punish the child - both educationally and emotionally.

And this - in a nutshell - is my problem with our primary school.

The point is that to explain it in a way that the other child can understand it's called "The Protégé Effect"

because expaining it to another person is known to greatly increase your understanding. When this happens, you’ll recall the information more accurately and apply it more effectively.

We all know that 1 add 1 equals 2, but I believe the actual mathematical justification of it spans several pages. There is a difference between being able to reliably follow a sequence of steps and actually understanding why you do what you do.

I understand lots of things a lot better than my daughter, many of which I have never before had to explain to someone else. I have often noticed rules or similarities or ways that I do things that make it easier when I am explaining something to my daughter. They are rules that I apply subconsciously but explaining makes them explicit in my mind because I have to stop and unpick them in order to show her what I'm doing. I think it actually does make me understand what I'm doing more fully.

you said it yourself ... she knows it in her own head but "On many occasions I have overheard DD2 explaining something she has done...she skips bits and misses them out (because she assumes others will automatically already know how to do them) ...it's rarely a nice, logical, clearly understood progression of thought." the effort of clearly explaining it to others focuses effort on logical thoughts and how to effectively communicating and one of the best ways to show that you truely understand something.

LaQueen MrZ is right and the skill of being able to identify and record (or in this case relate) your methods are essential as you progress in maths.

I am not completely against children being put into sets. My main objection is that kids are put into sets when they are still very, very young and that there is often little flexibility between sets, putting the younger kids in a school year at a disadvantage because they are more likely to be more immature / less developed.

Interestingly, in primary maths, I had an example of this today.

We have just been learning the traditional 'short' method of written division, which most of the class can perform accurately.

So I asked 'can you create a series of instructions for 'the division machine' to enable it to carry out short division, and test your instructions on a partner' - which made them really stop and think about each step [the most common error they have been making is small slips in one of the steps, and this really focused them on it].

My extension task, for the more able in division (not necessarily the 'more able' in general, but those who had demonstrated that they had an accurate method for division) was 'explain how short division works to someone who is good at maths but doesn't know this method yet. Your listener and isn't sure why it produces the right answers. Use any other method of division that you already know to support you'. It was a genuinely hard preocess - yes, only primary maths, but unpicking each step and explaining what is happening in terms of grouping or sharing or number lines or partitioning or informal chunking was a) worthwhile and b) really challenged the more able to think of maths as a process, not as a 'black box machine'....

My daughter is in year 2. In year 1 they had 6-6 groups at Maths and English. Some children were in top gropups let's say at Maths but in middle groups at English. It sent a positive message to the children: everybody is good at something. In year 2 the same children are sitting at the top-mid-LA tables.

teacherwith2kids

Can I just ask what year your teaching short division to?

I ask because our school say that 'short division' - or bus stop method is really just introduced in Year 6 and will be taught thoroughly in Y7, at senior school.

I have been scolded by teachers and a deputy Head at our school for teaching my children this method .

What does a scolding for teaching children to divide sound like? (I've got a funny feeling that I'd be reminding said staff about business, minding and their own.)