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Hmm! Well, we're a pretty small school (250, K-8) but the lower grades are the biggest. We only have one official "kindergarten room" with the room for sand and easel and stuff. The second K class (or half class, the other half of it is 1st, most years) doesn't get any of that, and there's no napping, and backpacks get left outside the door, so I guess that's how the space issue is solved!
Anyway, I find 22 or 23 (what I had last year) do-able, especially if you don't have biters or chair throwers but of course, the fewer there are, the more time I can spend on small groups and the less time the other kids not in the small group have to be trusted to work relatively independently. I've got 25 right now, 31 when the K/1 teacher sends her K students over for the last hour of the day so they get a chance to use the K equipment. It's tough at the beginning of the year when no one is used to waiting for their needs to be met.
You can't really draw any conclusions from California's experiment. There were too many other factors involved. My niece was in second grade the first year of the class size reduction. There was not enough space to add more classrooms, so they got around it by putting two teachers in a large class. 2:40 may be the same as 1:20, but with real people it doesn't work out the same. (It goes beyond classroom control and grading: a good teacher knows the students' strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, temperaments, idiosyncrasies, parents, etc.) More primary grade teachers were needed, and the upper-elementary teachers were happy to switch to lower grades. Fourth and fifth grades were left with a bad combination: large classes and inexperienced teachers.
Factors that had nothing to do with class size influenced the results. At my niece's school the approach to reading during those years was that if you give the kids a love for stories, they'll figure the reading out. No phonics at all. Spelling was out. The principal was actually opposed to the teaching of spelling, because this new generation would be using spellcheck. (Eventually, because of schools and administrators like this, teaching spelling became mandatory in California.)
At many California schools during that same time, good math books were removed from classrooms and replaced with fuzzy-math curriculum. Not "new math," which may have been confusing but at least was math, but feel-good-about-yourself-and-numbers stuff.
A few years later, realizing something wasn't working, schools went overboard the other direction, drowning the kids in spelling and grammar homework and removing PE to give more time to language overkill (my nephew's experience).
You can't really draw any conclusions from California's experiment. There were too many other factors involved. My niece was in second grade the first year of the class size reduction. There was not enough space to add more classrooms, so they got around it by putting two teachers in a large class. 2:40 may be the same as 1:20, but with real people it doesn't work out the same. (It goes beyond classroom control and grading: a good teacher knows the students' strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, temperaments, idiosyncrasies, parents, etc.) More primary grade teachers were needed, and the upper-elementary teachers were happy to switch to lower grades. Fourth and fifth grades were left with a bad combination: large classes and inexperienced teachers.
Factors that had nothing to do with class size influenced the results. At my niece's school the approach to reading during those years was that if you give the kids a love for stories, they'll figure the reading out. No phonics at all. Spelling was out. The principal was actually opposed to the teaching of spelling, because this new generation would be using spellcheck. (Eventually, because of schools and administrators like this, teaching spelling became mandatory in California.)
At many California schools during that same time, good math books were removed from classrooms and replaced with fuzzy-math curriculum. Not "new math," which may have been confusing but at least was math, but feel-good-about-yourself-and-numbers stuff.
A few years later, realizing something wasn't working, schools went overboard the other direction, drowning the kids in spelling and grammar homework and removing PE to give more time to language overkill (my nephew's experience).
I can tell you first hand at the high school level class disruptions and problems increase dramatically when you have a class size over 30. I have pretty good classroom management and routinely run a flawless classroom except when I have over 30 students. In my opinion student learning suffers dramatically, as we move MUCH slower, students get considerably less individual attention, and I spend a lot more time dealing with minor disruptions which in turn means I have less time for teaching.(At my school teachers are expected to handle most discipline issues on their own with the exception of serious things like fighting.)
You can't really draw any conclusions from California's experiment. There were too many other factors involved. My niece was in second grade the first year of the class size reduction. There was not enough space to add more classrooms, so they got around it by putting two teachers in a large class. 2:40 may be the same as 1:20, but with real people it doesn't work out the same. (It goes beyond classroom control and grading: a good teacher knows the students' strengths, weaknesses, learning styles, temperaments, idiosyncrasies, parents, etc.) More primary grade teachers were needed, and the upper-elementary teachers were happy to switch to lower grades. Fourth and fifth grades were left with a bad combination: large classes and inexperienced teachers.
Factors that had nothing to do with class size influenced the results. At my niece's school the approach to reading during those years was that if you give the kids a love for stories, they'll figure the reading out. No phonics at all. Spelling was out. The principal was actually opposed to the teaching of spelling, because this new generation would be using spellcheck. (Eventually, because of schools and administrators like this, teaching spelling became mandatory in California.)
At many California schools during that same time, good math books were removed from classrooms and replaced with fuzzy-math curriculum. Not "new math," which may have been confusing but at least was math, but feel-good-about-yourself-and-numbers stuff.
A few years later, realizing something wasn't working, schools went overboard the other direction, drowning the kids in spelling and grammar homework and removing PE to give more time to language overkill (my nephew's experience).
This was not what happened at my school or schools of others I knew at that time. I was in fourth or fifth grade when the smaller class sizes came. New classrooms did not have to be built. Since our school was properly planned, the existing classrooms were just made smaller. Instead of having a row of three classrooms, there became a row of four classrooms. Size was still not an issue. I know many other schools did that, in and out of my district. Teachers did not change grades. New teachers were hired. I don't know of any district around here that changed the math curriculum at that time. In fact, most around here never used fuzzy math. The districts have a set schedule for changing curriculum, and they didn't change that. At least around here, most of the curriculum changes came much later when the feds decided to get more involved. I honestly don't know where you were, but I know not one person who experienced what you described.
I can tell you first hand at the high school level class disruptions and problems increase dramatically when you have a class size over 30. I have pretty good classroom management and routinely run a flawless classroom except when I have over 30 students. In my opinion student learning suffers dramatically, as we move MUCH slower, students get considerably less individual attention, and I spend a lot more time dealing with minor disruptions which in turn means I have less time for teaching.(At my school teachers are expected to handle most discipline issues on their own with the exception of serious things like fighting.)
You are so right. It seemed I never really got control of my larger classes. I was always dealing with some issue that took away from teaching time.
This was not what happened at my school or schools of others I knew at that time. I was in fourth or fifth grade when the smaller class sizes came. New classrooms did not have to be built. Since our school was properly planned, the existing classrooms were just made smaller. Instead of having a row of three classrooms, there became a row of four classrooms. Size was still not an issue. I know many other schools did that, in and out of my district. Teachers did not change grades. New teachers were hired. I don't know of any district around here that changed the math curriculum at that time. In fact, most around here never used fuzzy math. The districts have a set schedule for changing curriculum, and they didn't change that. At least around here, most of the curriculum changes came much later when the feds decided to get more involved. I honestly don't know where you were, but I know not one person who experienced what you described.
I'm guessing your school wasn't built in the 1940s or 1950s, as were many schools in the San Gabriel Valley.
My niece's school didn't build new classrooms, either; I didn't mean to imply that they did. They did convert some other spaces to classrooms. Teachers did change grades, though, and the new teachers ended up in upper elementary. Her school also didn't use fuzzy math - for which I am thankful - but others did. (El Monte was one. LAUSD was the big one, frequently discussed in the Los Angeles Times during that time.) When the fuzzy-math was over, a teacher from El Monte offered me some math books that were being thrown away. They were fourth grade math books with about two pages of actual math.
You didn't say what district you taught in, but since your location is La Puente, that's the one I checked. Information on the Hacienda-La Puente School District's plans to build new classrooms for class-size reduction can be found here: http://inet-server.enet.hlpusd.k12.c...ndelection.pdf
Back to the topic:
I'm glad the class-size reduction went smoothly at your school. What were the results? Did you notice any difference in the achievement level of the students who arrived in your class after going through the smaller classes? What is your opinion of how class size affects achievement?
In East Asian countries, like South Korea, class sizes are all over 40.. They seem to be doing fine.
We just have a bunch of spoiled brats (including the parents).
Look at student behavior overseas. Overseas, education isn't a right, it's a priviledge. We are not spoiled. We're dealing with the realities of having to educated every child who comes through the door no matter what the challenges...no matter how well they behave....regardless of whether or not they want to learn...and there, class size matters.
Give me kids who are well behaved and want to learn and I'll take a class of 40. Give me kids who are angry that they are being forced to take chemistry against their will (this is the mindset of a significant percentage of my students) and 24 is pushing it.
In my classes where most of the kids didn't want to be there even when they dropped below 25 I struggled. Contast this to a physics class, optional so all the students wanted to be there, and 30 wouldn't have been a problem if I'd had the lab space.
Last year, I had two lower level chemistry classes. In one, half the kids were special ed and I, usually, operated without a para. In the other, half the kids were in there because they had to take chemistry and they didn't want to be there. Guess which class ran smoother? I started the year very nervous abotu the special ed kids but they were not my problem. They tried and they behaved. My problem was the class where half of the kids didn't want to be there and didn't want to learn chemistry. THAT was like playing a game of whack-a-mole every day.
Whether or not class size matters depends on the motivation and objectives of the students. If the students are determined to derail the class because they don't want to learn, class size matters a lot. If they come in ready and willing to learn, not so much.
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You are so right. It seemed I never really got control of my larger classes. I was always dealing with some issue that took away from teaching time.
