| My son's school here in Orange County (Irvine) Calif. is an
"experimental" one, where the entire school has been broken into
multi-age classes for almost three years. Kindergarten is still on
it's own, but we have 1/2 (primary core), 3/4 (intermediate core) and
5/6 (upper core). We also have open classroom (two rooms, two
teachers, two student teachers, etc.) arrangements in all grades. The
teachers team, in that Joe's teacher (Mrs. McElroy) handles all
English for the "youngers" (1st grade) and the teacher in the next room
(Mrs. Allen) handles all Math for them, and vice versa (Mrs. M does
Math for the olders, Mrs. Allen does English for the olders). My son
is exposed to 2-3 different teaching styles at all times, but will
keep the two main teachers for the full two years. With the exception
of the Math and English curriculum, the kids all team in even
older/younger mixes for everything.
Joe is also a summer baby (6/20/88), and one of the youngest kids
his class. However, he is really enjoying this arrangement, and I see
many advantages. He is learning much in terms of behavior and specific
skills from the olders in his class (An older "lefty" has been helping
Joe with proper pencil-hold for good penmanship, since his parents are
both "righties"!).
The only issue I have seen is that the expectations for a 1st grader
seem to a little high in terms of productivity and concentration. I
can only assume that this is because of the multi-age environment.
It's probably a lucky thing that my son and I both seem to like the
multi-age class, since we don't get much of a choice without
transferring to a school out of our neighborhood! -:)
M.
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| Boston Globe 3/3/94 Child Care Column
Reprinted without permission
WHY MIXED-AGE GROUPS CAN BE GOOD FOR KIDS
by Barbara Meltz
Contributing Reporter
Thirty years or so ago, when we were children, some of us were in combined
kindergarten-first grade classrooms, often with unhappy results. Now many
of us have the option to place our children in combined classrooms, and
we're reluctant to do so.
This may be one time to ignore those instincts.
Mixed-age classrooms today are nothing like those of 30 years ago, assures
early childhood educator Jerlean Daniel, an assistant professor of child
development at the University of Pittsburgh. She was in one of those class-
rooms herself when she was a kid. "Discombobulated" is the way she describes
it.
Back then, she explains, ages were combined for practical reasons: There
weren't enough 7-year-olds for a first grade, or a school couldn't afford
both a kindergarten and a first grade teacher.
Today, when ages are combined, it's hopefully being done for philosophical
reasons. "We have a greater understanding now of how children learn," says
Daniel, who has been working with mixed-age groups for 18 years. They don't
learn on a flat, even plane.
Early childhood educator Lilian Katz says research shows children learn best
through active, not passive, experiences, in situations that are informal
and not didactic.
Good mixed groupings maximize these experiences. "They enable kids to learn
in two directions," explains Katz, because there is a lot of peer tutoring
going on, in which older children help the younger ones.
"When an older child helps a younger one, whether to tie a shoe or sound
out a word, it reinforces what she knows and also boosts self esteem, "
Katz says. Research shows a younger child is more likely to catch on to
something when learning from a slightly older child than from an adult, and
that she sees the older child as a role model.
This process also builds empathy, Katz says, something she believes has
lifelong implications. Katz is president of the National Association for
the Education of Young Children.
There's another benefit from mixed groups that particularly appeals to Katz:
"There's less competition among kids." Children who are the same age in
the same class tend to think they are all supposed to be doing the same
thing, so if one child is reading and another isn't, the one who isn't feels
bad about himself.
In a mixed group, she explains, a younger child accepts that he can't do
the same things an older child can, but he has the expectation of someday
being able to. "That provides modeling and motivation for him and gives the
older child an appreciations of where he himself was not long ago," says
Katz.
At the same time, there's lots of room for a child to move around cog-
nitively and socially. If a 7-year-old is less socially mature, or a 5-year-
old is more academically mature, each child will be challenged at an
appropriate level. "Teachers tend to be less preoccupied with the 'norms'
in a mixed group and more able to make allowances for the zigzag of
development," says Katz.
While mixed groupings are so far mostly being offered as an option in school
systems, the concept is fast approaching trend status, according to the
National Association of State Boards of Education. Kentucky has mandated
it in its primary classrooms, and Oregon and California are considering it.
Many communities in Massachusetts are also experimenting with combining
ages.
Mixing ages is also becoming increasingly popular in day-care and preschool
settings.
Kimberlee Whaley, an assistant professor at Ohio State University and the
nation's leading researcher on infant-toddler mixed groups, is in the
vanguard of the movement. Her infant-toddler lab school mixes 6-week-old
babies with 3-year-olds.
Although her classroom has been very successful, she says teachers in general
are very afraid of this, and so are parents. Teachers worry about the
difficulty of planning a day for both a 1- and 3-year-old; parents worry
about safety.
She tells teachers, "You can plan across age groups...with activities that
are open-ended so kids can participate in whatever way that they can." A
2-year-old, for instance, may enjoy playing with glue to no purpose while a
4-year-old may actually want to make something using the glue.
She tells parents that safety is not a factor because children consciously,
on their own, slow themselves down around the the babies. If anything, they
become more nurturing - "They want to hold and feed and love the babies,"
she says - and more accepting when a sibling comes along.
But mixing ages at any level takes thoughtful planning. "You can't just
throw ages together and think it'll work," she says.
In her infant-toddler room, she never has more than 10 children at a time,
never more than four babies under 12 months olds. The rest of the ages are
divided so there are always two kids 6 months of each other. She says that's
because children form their closest friends with an age mate, but learn more
and are able to interact with a wider range of ages. In this age group, there
should always be three teachers, she says.
Daniel's rule of thumb for age distribution is to divide the group into
thirds, whether it's 5-, 6-, and 7-year-olds or infants and toddlers, so
that a third of the group is among the oldest, a third among the youngest,
and a third in the middle. That way, she says, no one age dominates. For
preschoolers, she says there should be one teacher for four children. In
the elementary grades, she says there should be two teachers to 25 children.
In addition to asking about age distribution, here are other questions parents
should ask about a mixed-aged classroom:
o How committed is the teacher? Is she doing this because she's
assigned to it or because she thinks it's a good idea?
o What does she know about child development? Understanding
developmental milestones is the basis for success in any
mixed-age classroom, according to Daniel. Since most
primary grade teachers don't get child development as part
of their formal training, you want to know they have updated
themselves in some other way. Daniel says to ask specifically
if a teacher has read "Developmentally Appropriate Practice",
by Sue Bredekamp (published by the National Association for
the Education of Young Children). "That would go a long way,"
she says.
o What is the curriculum? If it's the same as for a same-age
group, "it will be a mess," warns Katz. Instead, children
should be separated by cognitive ability for formal learning
and should be together for such things as music, story time
and classroom projects, where children work at their level of
development toward a common goal. In educational jargon, this
is called project learning.
o How are children assessed? How will a teacher know if a child
is getting lost? Whaley says what you want to hear is that a
teacher has goals for each child. Hopefully, says Daniel, a
teacher will use Portfolio Assessment, where she looks at a
child's progress over a period of time, rather than traditional
grading.
There is one other important question on parents' minds: Are there any risks
to mixed-age groupings?
The only one Katz can think of is that a child may not be sufficiently
challenged. "That's why the teacher's training is so critical," she says.
Whaley says the only child she can think of who may not be right for a
combined classroom is one who is very timid and might be overwhelmed by
it.
Could a younger child feel inappropriate pressure to go beyond her
developmental level? Yes, says Daniel, if a teacher focuses on specific
academic skills and drills the class on them. Or, says Whaley, if a child
is unable to do what she is being asked and is not allowed to proceed at
her own developmental pace. Again, adequate teacher training prevents
that.
The Montessori education movement has been mixing age groups successfully
since 1958, according to Lilian Mullane of the American Montessori Society
in New York City.
"We haven't found any negatives to doing it," says Mullane. Katz, Whaley and
Daniel echo the thought.
"As long as it's done well and incorporates all the things we've talked
about, I can't think of any reason a parent wouldn't choose this option,"
says Katz.
[end of article]
/Sidebar to article:
MIXING THEM UP WITHOUT CONFUSION
o If you like the idea of a mixed-age grouping but aren't sure
your school is going about it in the right way, voice your
concerns. "If they aren't responsive to you, or there's no
room for negotiation, then don't do it," says Jerlean Daniel,
an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
o Most combined classrooms enable a child to stay with the same
teacher for at least two years. That's usually an advantage,
unless a child and teacher don't get along.
o Another advantage of mixed groups is that they eliminate the
need for retention, an issue that comes up often in
kindergarten and first grade, when children's development
is so uneven.
Barbara F. Meltz
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