Twins in primary schools

[ByGoldHare]

Hi,

Would any of you mind sharing your experience of having either your own twins or teaching twins in primary school please?

I’m particularly interested in people experience of rural small village school (single or combined) vs town bigger school (multiple forms), in terms of friendship formations and development of twins individual identities.

I’m also interested in hearing your thoughts on splitting twins and the timing of it! I have identical twin girls who will be starting nursery school in September.

Thank you 🙂

I should add, I’m also a teacher and have for many years followed the research in my home country regarding educating twins. It is completely possible to separate within the classroom, ie have the twins in the same class but take steps to ensure that they sit in different parts of the classroom, are in different groups for group work etc. That way they can still access each other as a home base, and therefore benefit from their closeness, but experience the class room individually and independently.

@onlyoneoftheregimentinstep That’s great insight, thank you. I wanted ask you about the timing of separation. Have you seen cases where the twins are split in Year 3 (junior school)? And whether it’s harder to separate later?

In the perfect world, I would have liked to keep them together for Key Stage 1 so it’s less of a logistical nightmare, ie same performance, same parents evening, one parents whatapp group etc But obviously their wellbeing and ability to thrive will come first! And I might not have the option of keeping them together because of the blanket policy at school.

Because I’m expecting baby no. 3 😂

We did this and it was perfect for ours. We had advice from their nursery (they were not overly dependent) so they went into the same class and made their own friends. The school mixed classes part way through and they chose to separate. One felt more strongly than the other - basically his brother is his security object and knowing they'd likely be separated in secondary school he wanted to learn how in a safe environment.

However, I wouldn't have been keen for them to swap if it was just one twin leaving his friends and joining an established class. I'd also say the adjustment to secondary school has been massive and I wouldn't have wanted them to deal with separation on top.

I took over a Y2 class in January, there were identical twin boys. For the first few weeks I left the seating arrangements as the previous classteacher had arranged them but by Feb 1/2 term I had observed that one twin was over-shadowing the other, so I moved my groups around and sat them on different tables. Mum went mad!

However I explained my reasoning to her and she agreed that she wanted them both to fulfill their own potential. Needless to say the groups remained as I had organised them.
The boys didn't actually care, there was plenty of opportunity both within the classroom and at other times for them to be together.
Over the years I have taught several pairs of twins in the same class, identical and fraternal, from diverse backgrounds and always treated them as individuals.

I've taught twin girls. The non-identical ones in a small rural primary school (tiny Reception class) didn't seem to fare too badly, but they were two very different girls, with different friends. I'm not sure how it turned out for them in later years (mixed classes) because I moved to another school.

That school had a new set of identical twins starting. They were identical down to the last hair bobble, and their names were almost identical (with a one letter difference). One teacher described as it being something like out of The Shining! The more dominant one talked for the other and they regularly got mixed up, by both staff and classmates. As they were not in split classes, I tried separate tables, but they would gravitate towards each other at all times. They were always together, and this was reinforced by their very dominant mother. We had a free-flowing Reception class, and then two classes for Year One onwards.

Congratulations @ByGoldHare!
Are you certain it's not babies 3 and 4 ?!

@Chilbolton80 We shall find out at the 12 week scan 😂 mine were identical and apparently it’s not genetic so chances of it happening is quite low