Experience of split classes

[Shw017]

Hi, my son is currently in reception in a fairly small school. It is looking likely that next year he will be one of 7 (the youngest) who will be in a class with reception (currrently nursery) the remainder of their year will join the youngest of year two. My son is doing well and seems to be grouped with older children for maths and guided reading at the moment. I am just wondering if anyone has any experience of this type of system and if it can be successful?

I worked as TA in a class that combined Reception, Yr1 and Yr2. The teacher was very good and well organised, so it did work surprisingly well.

It gives the flexibility for the more able youngest children to work with Yr1, and conversely, the less able Yr2 children can work at slower pace with younger children.

Probably almost any class will have to differentiate, with the the 'average' in the middle, then plus a year, and minus a year, in terms of ability.

So, provided the teacher is good, and organised, it should not present any problems.

My son's school has a 45 intake, two smaller YR classes of 22-23, then 3 classes of 30 spread across Y1/2 (a y1 class, a y 1/2 class and a y2 class) and so on all the way up the school. The whole group across 2 years do the same topic, then the work is differentiated for the year group and by ability. For example, All three classes do maths at the same time, so children can move into different ability groups, moving between classes.
It's worked v well for my son, he is one of the older ones and in top groups, and he has been in the mixed class and worked with the year group above then the y2 class and had an extension group.
I'd be concerned about being one of only a few 'left behind' in reception, particularly as there is a big step up between yr and y1. It can work v well if the school have a strategy in place to deal with it.

Yes I think that is the consern really as I know a lot of schools have split classes but children have groups for maths/literacy which are ability based. This seems to be a case of just the youngest 6/7/8 stay behind and then following year are back with their year group then the year following are with the younger ones again ect . DS is doing well for a summer birthday so im a little worried about how it will work.

DD's school is a very small village school. When she went into Year 1 she was streamed into the Year 2/3 class with a couple of her cohort. The rest of her year group were in the YrR/1 class. DD is a late August born and very much the youngest in her year group, but she really benefitted from being in the Year 2/3 class.

I understand that some schools prefer to use age as the cut-off, but from a personal point of view, that would have been unfair on DD.

I had this for DC1, I went into it with a positive attitude/open mind etc but I'll be honest, it wasn't great for us. DC was born in August. Firstly it was a confidence knock as lots of friends were in the big class next door, they did feel held back and having to repeat loads of daily reception class basics was a drag.

It also didn't help that there were some fairly big reception boys who were born in September and 'still learning' how to behave in school, DC was quite small for age and got shoved about a bit (DC had already had to go through this the previous September when some of their own year group were learning how to behave in school, I felt sorry for them having to do it again).

Another problem was that the school told us that on field trips/larger activities the whole of year 1 would be able to mix together...this was not the case and they were kept together in class groups.

DC2 will go up in to a set year 1 class next year and I am much happier with that.

I guess communication is key and perhaps making sure that the school do whet they said they would...this school is not know for its open door policy though so it was pretty tricky to navigate. I moved DC in the end and would now avoid split classes at the lower levels at all cost. You might find that a different school does it better though...