Mixed years - any experience?

[admylin]

Our school here in Berlin is going to start a new teaching method, the teacher said that they are following a method that has been successfull in Holland - so for some part of the day year 3 and 4 will have lessons together and year 1 and 2 will always be together - some things will be completely mixed so they could have year 3 and 4 with 5th year.
I know this has been done in the UK with 2 years put together, have any of you experienced anything positive or negative about this sort of teaching? I think it must be harder for the teacher to plan lesons, and especially because in our school they never have teaching assistants.

Ds is in a year that has an "extra" have class., ie he is in Primary 2 and there is also a P2/3 class (as well as a Primary 3 class). This benefits him as he is very good at numbers, and fgoes into the P2/3 class for number time.

In Scotland, any "mixed" year classes have to be slightly smaller - I tihnk iti is now 20 instead of the "normal" maxmimum of 25. There are also classroom assitiants.

S o much of teaching at the primary school level is done in small groups that mixed year teaching can work - but don't know how things are done in Gernaly.

Yes, we have this system. We have classes for R/Y1, Y1/2, Y3/4, Y5/6.

I only have experience from Y2 onwards, but I would say it works very well.

ds is currently in Y4. For subjects such as Geography/History/Science etc the teachers operate a two year revolving programme, so that the whole class learn together. They just do the projects in a different order, depending on which year they start in, but at the end of the two years they have all achieved the same results. For example, its not really important whether they study Tudor before Romans as long as they cover it all in the end.

We are quite a large school, so there are three Y3/4 classes and three Y5/6 classes, so for literacy and numeracy they get split according to ability, so there is a Y3 group, a Y4 group and a Y3/4 group for those who are mid range. This is good as it means that if your child is really bright, they can be moved up a year or, if they are a bit behind, they can stay in a lower group until they are a bit more confident. The whole school does numeracy and literacy at the same time, so that a bright child in a Y4 class can join the Y5 class etc.

I think this is a really good set up and all the children seem to thrive on it. It means they have friends in year groups other than their own and, as a whole, they all get on really well together.

DS's school is a small rural school - they have classes for reception+yr1+yr2, yr3+yr4, and yr5+yr6.

They are very positive about it - saying that any year group is mixed ability so having mixed ages is not very different. They target the work for each child anyway within the general topic that all are doing. So basically certain kids they go into things deeper and expand more, others they get to their own level.

They say socially it is good for them to mix with a bigger age range.

Our school does have lots of teaching assistants though.

Should have added: every class has a teacher and a fulltime teaching assistant.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

it riles me too much to post but - sorry no - dont like it at all

In theory at least I can see some advantages to it but I really don't see it working well here in Berlin, do you admylin? At least not the first couple of years.

Our local school is a very small village school. They have: nursery, yrs 1, 2 & 3 and yrs 4, 5 and 6.

DD1 thrived there and did really well. The school gets excellent ofsted results, and apparently the high school can tell which pupils went there rather than other local schools because they have a much higher level of learning.

I admit I was horrified when we first moved here, with thoughts of how would she learn anything when there were children with such differing ages in the same class. It worked ok, and we are more than happy that we sent her there.

I'm surprised at the positive answers. I initially thought it was a bad idea but I see now that it could work.
Our problem will only be that the school is going to have to get more assistants or teachers as I still think a mixed group with an even larger ability span than a normal class is going to be hard to teach with just one teacher in the class.

That's the problem I see with it too admylin. Perhaps there are some structures planned to tackle that aspect of it? Doubt it though somehow

We had problems with the age mix at Kindergarten, found that ds only had 1 boy abit older than him and the rest were a year younger and they were constantly held back because of the really small ones. School is different though and for ds it should be good if he can join in with the older ones as he is very bored as it is, it's all very slow going and he's starting to mess about in class through boredom.

Even in ds' normal (P2) class, they are broken down into groups the majority of the time: there are 3 or 4 reading groups for example, all at different levels and with different books. Both classes have thier own classroom assistant, presmuably to help with the small groups.

That's a real worry, isn't it? My impression was our school tries to help pupils who are lagging behind (Förderunterricht etc) but has no facilities for encouraging those who are ahead of the class at all. We have one very bright boy (Hungarian) who is about 2 years ahead of the rest of the class, for instance. I think a lot could be done to encourage him.

I keep thinking chess club would be good for your ds. I don't why but it always come to mind when I think about him. Wouldn't stop him being in bored in class though of course

The classroom assistant thing has got to come to Germany eventually - the only thing we have is a voluntary reader, ours is a pensioner who wants to help out and comes in to read with a small group (the best readers are allowed to sit with her in the schol library) It all goes through an organization though, so although I've offered to help out too no one has taken me up on it. I would have had to volunteer through the organization and could be sent to any school.

Thanks SSShakeTheChi, you always have such good ideas! Will look into that.

Both my boys have experienced mixed year classes as the village school goes up to end of Yr3, but only has 3 classrooms. Ds2 was in a Yr2/1 class (he was in yr2). They kept some yr2s with yr 1s and some with yr3s. He was in younger half of the year so stayed with yr1s .... lost yet?! It worked well for him - grew in confidence as for once was one of the older children in a class.
However not so good for ds2. Last year he was in younger half of yr1 and was kept with the reception children - did not work in my opinion. He is a bright child (doesn't every parent say that ) and I felt he wasn't pushed forward enough. he complained that he was bored. Reception is a unique year and I think they took up most of the teacher's time. This year (yr2) his class is back together - the yr1s are with them, but it seems better.
The theory that each child goes at their own pace anyway makes sense. There are some yr2s who are on lower reading levels than some of the yr1s.

Our school has mixed classes some years and I have seen only positive results. They do however try to keep reception children on their own, and also not to mix Yr6 with any other year, but otherwise there is a certain amount of fluidity.

As far as mixed ability goes, you have to remember that teachers already have to differentiate in their lesson plans between at least 3 ability groups, often 4.

One teacher I know very well says she has had a smaller ability range in a class spanning 3 years than in a class with only one year. It just depends on the mix of children in that particular class.

Again though, each class has an assistant at least part-time.

In response to a previous post, I do not think that age and ability go hand in hand.

That is true, my dd is the youngest in her class but is top of the class so as long as she was in a mixed class with older kids it could only do her good. Ds is top of his class too but he's lazy so if he was in the older group he would quite happily sit back and wait for the others to catch up.