Should children's ability groups be on display for all to see?

[choccyp1g]

At parents evening last night, I was a bit to see all the groups listed up for everyone to see; in obvious ability order.
eg maths group in ascending sides (Circles, triangles, going up to hexagons), even the spelling groups go from words to thesaurus.

From the parents point of view, it is the only chance you get to really see how they are doing compared to the rest of the class, but it must be hard on the children to have it on display the whole time.

I help with crafts sometimes, so I know the lists are up all year round.

How do you handle differentiated work, then mrz? I presume you still hand out different worksheets even if they aren't in ability groups by seating, in which case, how does TA know which worksheets to give which child?

Do you teach Reception, mrz? I only ask because I'm amazed that you don't need ability groups. I had them even in Reception. Maybe that's why I like sticking to Y6. Mind you a couple of years ago I had a Y3 which had a range from P levels up to level 4. That was fun!

I think it's better if they the names are bland, eg blue green red whatever.

No one would know what mine were from the names!

We don't have ability groups in any year group myredcardigan except for Y2 (because that is the way the Y2 teacher likes to work)

lljkk I don't like worksheets and prefer not to use them. They aren't often used in any of our classes.

Ok, you're going to have to ellaborate now!!!
How on Earth do you work that? Are you a selective prep? If not how do you cope with the often vast differentiation required?

My DS is 5 and at a selective independent school but they still have groupings in class even though his teacher has told me the ability band is far narrower that you'd find in state.

I'm really curious as to how you work it. How can you stretch, say, very able level 3A/4 year 3s on the exact same activity that you are supporting those Y3s on level 1?

I rarely use 'filling in' worksheets but prompting worksheets can be an excellent resource.

No I teach in a primary school in the bottom 20% of social deprivation class of 30 children with a huge range of abilities.
I don't have fixed groups for any activities and usually mix the abilities as far as possible.
Differentiation is usually by the level of support given and the expected outcome rather than totally separate tasks although in maths some children may be working with larger numbers.
We have found that our children are making more progress than when they were ability grouped and given different tasks.

I think that higher up the school you would find it difficult to provide a curriculum that precisely matched children's needs using just differentiation by outcome/support.

I teach in a Y5 class ranging from P8 to level 5b; my support is used for the SEN child who is on the P levels - differentiation by outcome wouldn't wash, I'm afraid!

We work in the same way in Y5/6

and our children have just obtained excellent SAT results.

I'm sorry, mrz - I have the utmost respect for you as an educator and a poster, but I would have a big problem say, observing a Literacy lesson in Y6 in which the teacher used the same activities for all children, regardless of their needs. Why would you teach children who were a level 2c, for example, how to use a semi-colon when they were having trouble with capital letters? And if you didn't teach the level 5 child how to use a semi-colon, how would you move their writing on in terms of punctuation?

One of my DSs used to have a teacher who would set work on 3 levels and the children themselves chose which level worksheet they wanted to tackle.It seemed to work very well .The children felt much more in control and the any topics they found particularly easy/difficult were catered for .It was a very small class though.I don't know if it would work as well in a large class.

mrz that sounds great

since having a child of my own I feel pretty gutted I ever put a five year old in an ability group

Feenie we have an amazing literacy teacher who teaches both Y5 and Y6 (we work with subject specialist teachers in much the same way as secondary schools for English Maths and Science)she works extremely hard as it is a much more teacher intensive way of working but for us it works.

well I wish my ds was going to your school mrz

If I go back to teaching I will be doing things VERY differently.

Explain to me how! Use the scenario I gave you, for example. I have also worked as a subject specialist in a primary school setting - in order to teach the full range of specific writing skills she would HAVE to use some kind of guided writing groups or some children would either be in way over their heads and some wouldn't be stretched at all.

Without teaching those skills specifically, you can't always use differentiation by outcome.

I have no doubt you do that very effectively in Reception, and I have watched our own Reception teacher do the same very skillfully. But the more specific the skills become, and the wider the ability, the more inappropriate those methods become. Or else you just end up teaching to the middle, and hoping for the best.

The process we use for writing is
Internalising genre patterns ? there are three basic levels of patterning:
a. The template of a piece of writing ? the writing frame. (we use Sue Palmer's Writing skeletons)
b. The flow of the sentences ? syntax.
c. Words ? especially connectives.
(what Pie Corbett calls Immersion)

We use Big Writing so every child knows what they need to do to move onto the next level
Lots of experience up levelling and down levelling writing. Punctuation games, vocabulary thief, magpie-ing

So the whole class might be given the sentence

"The boy ran." and asked how to improve it obviously there isn't a right or wrong answer so everyone is asked if they want to read their up levelled sentence and every contribution is celebrated and discussed and sometimes further up levelled.

IMITATION ? familiarisation.
? Getting to know the model genre through ? storytelling or rereading.
? Hear it, say it, read it, explore it.
? Spelling, sentence and paragraph work.
? Older pupils: - create a Writer?s Toolkit.
INNOVATION ? re-using a well-known text.
? Substitution; addition; alteration; change of viewpoint; reusing the basic genre pattern.
? Talk and drawing before writing.
? Spelling, sentence and paragraph work.
INVENTION ? making up a text.
? Building up a piece of writing ? drawing, drama, images, video, first-hand experience, location, quality reading, etc.
? Talk before writing. (LOTS)
? Spelling sentence and paragraph work.
? Putting the tool kit into writing.

It's a system we use from nursery (talk with an adult scribe) right through the school.

Sorry it is difficult to explain how it works but it does for us.

Yes, yes, mrz - we do exactly that as part of our whole class teaching, and as part of my role as Literacy co-ordinator I have to ensure that within that delivery those specific skills are taught.

At some point, there would have to be some guided group teaching. Children can't learn the use of a semi-colon by osmosis.

Well the only difference is we don't do the guided group teaching bit then.

Children learn the use of a semi colon by lots of examples in whole class shared reading and writing.

That's fine in Shared writing for an introduction to its use, but won't mean much to a child who has problems using capital letters. Where is the explicit teaching for those children who need to practise examples, and where is the explicit teaching for the child who needs help with basic punctuation?

You can't do all that within whole class shared writing, unless the classes are small or you set across Y5 and 6, for example.

Don't get me wrong, there is a place for whole class teaching and differentiation by outcome, but it can't work 100% of the time for those reasons.

It's a continuous process not just as an introduction to new things. Every piece of shared writing involves identifying when to use capital letters when to use semi-colons when to use speech marks. It's very much a drip drip drip daily process with daily reinforcement, daily practice and active learning.
Current KS2 classes are 30+ and we are doing it and achieving good results

I have to agree with feenie, I just don't see how it works outside the directed teaching time.

Is there more than one adult in the class? I do a Y6 job share and we have help in 3 of the 5 literacy lessons and 3 of the 5 maths lessons.

The directed teaching time is obviously very much geared towards the Y6 objectives but some of my class are barely touching on Y3 objectives so if left unsupported in the independent task they would sink. They would also sink if presented with clauses and subordinate clauses when they really struggle to construct a very simple sentence.

How to do equations/fractions/percentages when you haven't got sound knowledge of place value to 50?