Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Slavin is not wrong about the benefits of splitting students into ability groups and significantly altering the curriculum to meet each group's needs. My point is that what he suggests, splitting a mixed ability class into several small within class ability groups and altering the curriculum accordingly, requires teachers to have 3 or 4 plans of different content, levels, and pace per lesson. Teachers would then have to split their time to instruct/facilitate each group. 1/3 to 1/4 of a teachers time and attention is less beneficial than an entire class length of time.
It is not as cumbersome as you think if the school district has a clue about Elementary School organization/bell schedule. You use a block or modified block schedule where each grade has related subjects (Art, Music,Gym etc) at the same time. That then becomes common planning time for each grade level. Teachers then divide lessons up and plan lessons to share. Each teacher might do a small group assignment with strategies designed for the grouping being used. This way those readers who feel their kids learn better with hands on learning (learning styles) can have their lesson focused on their strengths. Grouping is a key STRATEGY to help meet individual learning styles. What happens is little Johnny comes home and says he was in the same lesson with little Keith up the street and big mommy freaks out because her baby boy is smarter then Keith. Hmmmm maybe they were building something together in science class. Perhaps assembling a model bee.
Also experienced teachers don't throw good lessons away they keep and file them and have a repertoire of various small group strategies within a couple of years. Good schools will build their grade level teams with a solid mixture of experience and strengths.
Parents need to demand that their school district study the use of time in the individual schools and how much of that time is actually used for instruction. Not all schedules and teacher implementation of allocated time is equal.
I really think you are giving yourself away as not having read the link you are reacting to. You say that you disagree with Slavin and share Math and Reading and math as areas you disagree with him. That is the give away that you aren't familiar with the link or his practices. Why do I say that? Please lurkers read the quote from Slavin:
--Students should identify primarily with a heterogeneous class. They should be regrouped by ability only when reducing heterogeneity is particularly important for learning, as is the case with math or reading instruction.
The above is from the link. HE IS AGREEING WITH YOU OR YOU ARE AGREEING WITH HIM BUT ARE SAYING HE IS WRONG SO ARE YOU SAYING YOU ARE WRONG?
Slavin recommends within class ability groupings, which is time-consuming and difficult to manage for teachers. The Maryland school assigns students to different ability grouped classes for reading and math - that's the difference.
It is not as cumbersome as you think if the school district has a clue about Elementary School organization/bell schedule. You use a block or modified block schedule where each grade has related subjects (Art, Music,Gym etc) at the same time. That then becomes common planning time for each grade level. Teachers then divide lessons up and plan lessons to share. Each teacher might do a small group assignment with strategies designed for the grouping being used. This way those readers who feel their kids learn better with hands on learning (learning styles) can have their lesson focused on their strengths. Grouping is a key STRATEGY to help meet individual learning styles. What happens is little Johnny comes home and says he was in the same lesson with little Keith up the street and big mommy freaks out because her baby boy is smarter then Keith. Hmmmm maybe they were building something together in science class. Perhaps assembling a model bee.
Also experienced teachers don't throw good lessons away they keep and file them and have a repertoire of various small group strategies within a couple of years. Good schools will build their grade level teams with a solid mixture of experience and strengths.
It should be working, then. It isn't. According to a 2003 study, teachers report that they don't differentiate often, or at all, even though they knew they were supposed to. The three reasons listed for this were: lack of time, they didn't know how to differentiate their lessons, and they felt that the smarter kids would be okay on their own and didn't need a differentiated lesson (Westberg and Daoust).
Public Schools in a lot of places have done nothing for their students for a very long time. Some of the schools have utterly failed their students in every aspect. Most are just a drain on public finances. The kids would be better off getting their share of the money and spending it on parochial schools IMHO.
It should be working, then. It isn't. According to a 2003 study, teachers report that they don't differentiate often, or at all, even though they knew they were supposed to. The three reasons listed for this were: lack of time, they didn't know how to differentiate their lessons, and they felt that the smarter kids would be okay on their own and didn't need a differentiated lesson (Westberg and Daoust).
Not if it isn't done correctly. There are over 2.8 million K-12 teachers in the United States. What career has 2.8 million plus doing a good job? Do you want the lawyer quality number 2 million as your divorce attorney? As you said they knew they were suppose to. That is a shortcoming not of the strategy but the practitioner. Any teacher who says they don't know how to differentiate is signaling how much they know/don't know about that content area. Content requires that you know it to differentiate. Many teachers are not the sharpest knives in the drawer and the sharpest ones tend to gravitate to the same house in the community.
Public Schools in a lot of places have done nothing for their students for a very long time. Some of the schools have utterly failed their students in every aspect. Most are just a drain on public finances. The kids would be better off getting their share of the money and spending it on parochial schools IMHO.
Then you would have the same problem when you ran out of nuns and competent teachers there. Sending kids to non public schools is only going to make matters worse. You will have a greater shortage of teachers in most areas as the pay and benefits would be less. You would need 2.8 million more teachers in private schools if we did away with public schools.
Sixty-five preservice elementary teachers' math anxiety levels and confidence levels to teach elementary mathematics and science were measured. The confidence scores of subjects in different math anxiety groups were compared and the relationships between their math anxiety levels and confidence levels to teach mathematics and science were investigated. The results suggest that low math anxious preservice teachers are more confident to teach elementary mathematics and science than are their peers having higher levels of math anxiety. Negative correlations were found between preservice teachers' math anxiety and their confidence scores to teach elementary mathematics (r = -0.638) and between preservice teachers' math anxiety and their confidence scores to teach elementary science (r = -0.417). Also, personal math and science teaching self-efficacy scores of participants were found to be correlated at 0.01 level (r = 0.549). (Contains 3 tables.)
Math-Anxious Elementary Teachers' Change Process in a Graduate Course Aimed at Building Math Confidence (http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/1/7/6/7/p117677_index.html - broken link)
All of the nine study participants were teaching in the primary (K-3) grades, and all but one had never taught at higher grade levels.
Most of the study participants went through a significant change in their beliefs and attitudes that was clearly described in their journal entries and reflection paper. Their math self-concept improved significantly. While they were still somewhat math anxious at the end of the course, their level of math anxiety was substantially reduced and their anxiety was often related to specific math topics that they had not yet mastered. They reported starting to use math more in their daily life rather than relying on others to do the work for them. Moreover, some of them even started liking math! - As one of the teachers put it: "I feel as though this course marks the beginning of a journey for me - a math journey. I refuse to believe that I can't be good at math. In fact, I've actually begun to like math".
And you wondered why your kid developed math anxiety in 2nd grade.
Well now are the math anxious teachers evenly distributed across schools and districts?
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/c1/c1s5.htm
However, a recent study by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) suggests that the pattern for potential mathematics and science teachers may be different. ETS found that the teaching profession tends to attract teachers with below-average skills, based on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores of prospective teachers taking the Praxis II between 1994 and 1997 (Gitomer, Latham, and Ziomek 1999.)[10] Based on a comparison of SAT scores for teacher candidates passing the Praxis II exam with the average score for all college graduates, ETS concluded that elementary education candidates, the largest single group of prospective teachers, have much lower math and verbal scores than other college graduates.
Should new teachers at the low end of the test score range be paid the same as the those at the top?
Then you would have the same problem when you ran out of nuns and competent teachers there. Sending kids to non public schools is only going to make matters worse. You will have a greater shortage of teachers in most areas as the pay and benefits would be less. You would need 2.8 million more teachers in private schools if we did away with public schools.
Why do so many people see this as an either/or proposition? Why can't both public and private co-exist with both receiving public funding and families choosing the option they believe will best fit their children's needs, like they do in some of the European countries?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
One of the reasons our student often do poorly in math
