I understand that ability grouping is a slack approach to education, but the more i thought about it, the more i questioned how i really would deal with it. So i'm curious for your thoughts and opinions, too. If we're all on the same page with ability grouping being bad, how will we change it? What will you implement in your class that differs from what has been offered before? How will you change your student's future?

I definitely agree with Janelle. Yes, I say that it is a bad idea for the kid's sake, but how are we to deal with their future? How is the best way to teach them without having groups?

I am having a little trouble applying this scenario to my teaching future. As a chorus teacher on the middle school level, I will most likely have students of all "abilities" in the same class. I guess this would be heterogeneous "grouping", if anything. What I do have to offer is that chorus is a perfect example of how well this works: There are typically students who can read music, and those who can't. Some will have good pitch, other's won't. Those who aren't as "musical" learn from those who are. THe ones who do have these skills still learn something because they have to provide leadership. If you can help someone else do something, you'll be able to do it better yourself... if that makes any sense.

I guess this is one of the main reasons I am drawn to teaching music. Unless you have auditioned groups, all of the students are in the same class. Specifically, this is why I want to teach chorus (I'd be qualified to teach band or orchestra). In a chorus, you don't even worry about who is "first chair" or concertmaster, etc. I'm really thankful for this!

Janelle asks the tough questions. I'm thinking about these questions with a high school science or math classroom in mind:



Ideally every student will step into the classroom eager to learn science and math and make things easy for me, but I'm going to assume that many students are sitting at a desk to meet their graduation requirements. I'll also assume that I should not make mini-lessons based on a group of students who have similar abilities.

My first question is: do I always teach to the entire class? Lillie said this is possible in chorus classes. In science and math, I could create a inquiry driven environment where students expect that they will be asking me many questions about the lesson (instead of me asking the students questions). My answers would meet the individual ability of each student. I'm not sure if this "inquiry method" (or similar ones like discovery method) is practical because the students would be in more control of the lesson and the amount of time needed to answer questions might prevent the lessons from reaching end-of-year expectations. Of course we could disband the state curricula, but math and science seem to be built on previous math and science knowledge -- it is difficult to interpret the stats of a newspaper article if a reader does not understand algebra because algebra is a foundation for statistics. So if an algebra class uses my hypothetical inquiry method yet does not learn prerequisite knowledge for statistics, then how will next year's statistics teacher know where to start? I guess I could walk over to every student's next math teacher and personally relay what they learned, but communicating individual mastery becomes more difficult the more students I teach. These practical problems seem to be the catalyst for end-of-year expectations and a state curricula, although I am not saying either is the best solution.

Another hypothetical method to meet individual student's ability is one-on-one teaching. For this method I ask: how does a teacher manage their classroom time with each student? If I have 50 minutes and 30 students in high school science or math class, then I have about 1-and-a-half minutes to spend one-on-one with each student, assuming I spend an equal amount of time with every student. A block schedule would considerably increase the amount of teacher-to-student time I could distribute equally to every student, possibly upto 4 minutes for a class period lasting 2 hours. Of course I don't have to spend the same amount of time with every student but there would need to be some system where students who need more help could interrupt my attention, like raising their hands. I dislike the whole 'raise your hand' system because some students are shy and others abuse the system. Another solution to increasing the amount of one-on-one time would be decreasing class size, but I've heard studies that indicate small classes do not substantially change things unless the number of students falls below a dozen or so. A dozen students would cut class sizes in half and effectively double the amount of teachers needed -- increasing taxes, etc.

So there are two hypothetical methods for individualized teaching and I'm just as lost about how one plans a lesson void of ability grouping.

Justin,

What about ways that Lillie's approach might be applied to your own subject matter? Perhaps some brainstorming might be in order...

I am confused as to how we are or are not supposed to group our kids by ability. In the first grade, one of the first things you do is the reading tests and math assessments. The reason? So you can place kids in their "correct groups". I feel everything against ability grouping, but, say, in this county, where ability grouping is a part of curriculum, how do you get around it? I have no clue. My kids in first grade are given a word list and in one session of one day, according to how many words they read, they are placed in a reading group for the rest of the year. I am furious at this notion. We are saying "here is your group, your stuck, you can't excel, and if you do, you will just be at the top of this one group." There was a child in my class last year who was very smart. He loved to read. He caught on very quickly and tried very hard. Yet based on his brother from the year before (not as well with reading and lots of trouble sounding out words) he was not placed in the highest group. I brought this to the attention of my teacher three times throughout the year, and she said she wasn't going to move him up. I KNOW that he would have been able to handle the higher group. I know I seem like I am rambling, but here is another thing. The groups are necessary so that we can have more time with the kids in a smaller group setting because reading discussion groups are required in our school system. So we have to have some kind of groups. Yet my teacher felt burnt out from the stress of managing three groups. She gave the highest to me, but when push came to shove, the lowest was the one that received the least amount of attention if something else pressing was going on. i have to stop because i'm getting jumbled and frustrated. This is definitely a sore subject!