What happens these days with Y7 maths and English

[adelicatequestion]

Do they still stream classes or not?

I asked at an open evening and was surprised they said no. Its all mixed ability classes - from SAT scores at L3 to L5/6.

DD primary school streams them for Numeracy. She got L5 at end of yr 5, so I'm worried all their preparation will be wasted. How can 1 teacher teach effectively that range of abilities in one class.

Should I be looking elsewhere? Academic achievement is not ht emost important issue for me but I want her interest maintained.

They are streaming here (Cheshire) - 3 streams

Maybe its just here then.

I'm quite surprised they don;t.

English, maths, ICT, mfl and science are streamed at dd's school. The other subjects are mixed.

DS has just gone into yr 7. Haven't been told anything yet but 3 yrs ago dd was streamed for English and Maths from Oct half-term. This was on the CATS results and not the SATS.

Don't get much info from ds, so not even sure if he has done CATs yet!

I think individual schools can choose whether to stream or not. Personally, I agree with streaming. DD1 moved schools this year (into YR9). One of the schools we visited did not stream for English and that was one of the reasons why we didn't choose it.

My ds's school only streams from Year 8, and only for Maths.

It's a grammar, though, so maybe there isn't such a range of ability as in comps.

Here (cheshire) - Maths is streamed from the middle of year 7, English from the start of year 8

We set for english, maths, MFL and science. We test the kids in the different subjects and place them in a class with children with similar attainment levels.

Streaming is rather different. Children are places in a general 'band' for their subjects. So if they are in top set for eng;ish, they will be in top set for maths etc.

Setting is more speciic than streaming IMHO

DS has been streamed for everything from the begining. They did CATS test in July before they started.

They don't stream or set at DDs school. She has just started year 7 and is a pretty average student, however, they are already having trouble with disruptive students. I would have thought that this may be because they are bored and can't follow the work. She has friends that started school with her who are very bright and have students in their class who are probably L3. I really don't understand how a teacher can pitch the lesson to suit everybody. Surely this doesn't help either the very bright or the less able. The less able students are definitely holding the more able ones back as they tend to be the ones who disrupt the whole classes learning.

Actually reading Martianbishops post
DS is in the top class for all subjects except maths and english, where he is in the second class. The children in his maths and english class differ.

Hello

In my school we never set for English. In a mixed ability class the teacher is expected to differentiate the work - so all kids do the same task but at different levels. So - if you're studying a poem - all kids will be looking at the story of the poem, most kids will be looking at how the poet uses words to show the feelings of the character in the poem and some kids will be looking at all of this plus the way the poet uses techniques like metaphors/structure. Or sometimes you group them and they work on different aspects of a text. There's loads of ways of doing this. I used to have some kids who couldn't speak any English and other kids who were reading really tough texts for fun in my class.

You have to identify how you would target all learners on a lesson plan and in Schemes of Work. So you could ask to speak to the Head of English about this....

Funnily enough after what I wrote yesterday, ds came home and said they have been put into sets for Maths - so I imagine they have had CATS (not sure if they would have results from these yet) or some other type of test.

I know of another local school that does CATS in July as well (presumably so they can set straight away.)

Would you be concerned if a school doesn;t set?

I feel that a teacher can't effectively teach children ranging from L3 to L6 in one class which is what they were saying may happen.

It really does depend on the teaching. Some subjects are particularly difficult to teach without setting (Maths for example), but others get on fine.

But some of the most impressive lessons I have observed have been with a complete mixed ability group.

We asked a lot about setting at open evenings and got lots of different responses.

Interestingly the highest performing state school round here does not set at all, for any subject, in yr7.

We set ours, I have children in my year group who range from not being able to read at all, about 14% are not accessing the national curriculum levels to about 30% coming in at level 5 they just could not be taught mixed ability.