Class Placements

As the end of the year approaches, elementary teachers and administrators everywhere are trying to sift through parent requests (when allowed) and determine next year’s class placements.  I’d like to offer one suggestion regarding this process.

Whatever you do, do NOT put the very top-achieving students at a grade level in the same class with the very lowest students.  A teacher can only differentiate so far (I write this while still fatigued from the math unit I described in my previous post), and the students will be the ones to suffer if their ability range is too disparate.

Let’s be crude about this: give each child an overall academic rating on a scale from one to ten.  Then only allow students that are 7 or fewer points away from each other on the same class list.  One class might have students ranked between 1 and 8.  Another might have students ranked between 3 and 10.  But spans of 1 to 9, 2 to 10, and 1 to 10 would be disallowed.

I’ve written a few different posts about how teachers can differentiate effectively and how they can use flexible groups to target their instruction, but why not make things a touch easier for everyone right off the bat by choosing class lists in this way?