Ability Grouping vs Mixed Ability Grouping

What?

I'm sitting here on a wet Sunday afternoon, planning my reading programme for the next couple. Lately, I've seen a lot of discussions on mixed-ability grouping in maths, which challenges the way I've been teaching for may years.  I'm wondering if I should try it for reading.  Here's some of the posts and articles I've read.

Education Counts (lots of references, but mainly for maths)

Steph's Blog

Headteacher Magazine

“We favour mixed-ability teaching because of its social and equitable benefits, and the fact that we encourage our teachers to see all of our pupils as having different needs, abilities and working styles.” Heidi Conner

This quote seemed important, although it is aimed at whole classrooms being mixed-ability groupings, vs streaming each classroom.

Howard Stevenson's Blog

I also watched these video clips:

So what?

After reading the articles, and viewing the videos, I was most struck by the idea that ability grouping can limit the students and limit the exposure I, as the teacher, give them to more complex work, theories, and ideas.  I could see the idea that grouping students, where in NZ, Māori children would statistically end up in 'lower groups' could be a form of apartheid. I already feel that having to report to parents twice a year that their child may be 'below' the National Standards is appalling in terms of students' self-belief, without me doing it with my groupings.

What next?

I have decided to change my reading groups to make them mixed ability.  I have a lot of students who work very well with their peers, feeding off each others' ideas and knowledge. I will group those students together. I also have some students who don't work well with their friends (they get off task easily, and can be silly). Those students will be spread around the groups.

UPDATE:
Now that I'm putting my social groups together, some of the groups are one gender only...am I being sexist now?

Tutor Teacher Course Pt 2: Twilight Session

What?

A neat book to remind us about perspectives.

Available at The Book Depository






Beginning Discussion:
Thinking about the learning with our PCTs
Share successes and celebrations since our last workshop - why did these happen? What made them become celebrations/successes.

Real growth in their confidence.

Conversations

Difficult...

When others believe we are working for mutual purpose, that we care about their goals, interests, and values, then we have the basis for good dialogue.

Find a shared goal and you have both a good reason and a healthy climate for talking.

Patterson, Grenny, McMillan

Conversations that are tough, difficult, fierce, tricky, hard, stressful?

Those adjectives can make it worse than it needs to be. We're setting ourselves up into a negative headspace before hand.

Instead, call it an 'important' conversation.

"If it's important, then it's important to have the conversation" Joan Dalton

Positive...

Using Evidence and being specific:
I noticed...
I watched...
I noted...
I observed...
I saw...
I heard...

These are evidence-based

NOT: I think... because it is judgement

So What?

Tal

What now?

Talk to Hayley about my busyness.  Tell her to come to me when she needs something - just plonk herself in my classroom.

Completing the Same Work as Students

What?

Usually, when my class are  all completing individual work like Quickwrites or silent reading,  I will use the time to complete the roll, send emails to parents or other preparations.  The other day in our computer suite, I taught the students to embed video clips in their blogs, and then got them to complete a quickwrite response.  I did it too, with the following post:

Last night Sarah sent me the following video:

I really enjoyed this, because it didn't sugarcoat the truth - we are destroying our planet, our homes. We are cutting down trees (maybe forgetting the important role trees play in our lives) as if they will regrow really quickly. We are using fossil fuels like they are replaceable (scientists aren't absolutely sure, but they think that it takes the earth hundreds of thousands of years to break plants and small animals into oil). We are filling the oceans with plastic and rubbish, which is killing fish and marine life, as well as altering their bodies on a cellular level.

This is all very true, and there are lots of videos, songs, books and social media posts pointing out the way the earth is heading.  Here is another one:

The problem I have with all of these videos is that they don't offer up real solutions.  Yes, you and I can walk or bike more and put out our recycling, but is that enough? People will still cut down trees because we need paper, cardboard, tissues, toilet paper, packaging. We need wood for our houses and buildings and playgrounds.

To me, one of our biggest problems is plastic, for two reasons. Firstly because of the issue of plastic ending up in landfills and our oceans, secondly because of one of the ingredients in plastic - oil.  Yes, our precious oil is an ingredient in plastic.  Have a look at this list of products which contain oil. It is a real surprise to see some of those items. Read about all the clothing we wear that contains oil. Your school shirt, polar fleece and socks all contain oil.

What are we going to do to save our world? I don't know, which makes it worse. It will take major changes from not just each of us, but businesses and governments to stop the decline.  At the moment, people across the world can't even agree that change needs to happen.  

Tomorrow, you'll wish you had started today

So What?

The experience was good for the students - they saw that their work had value because I was doing it too.  My post also served as a good model, because I wrote with more depth, proposed solutions and showed how when they are working online, they can add more information with links.

What Now?

I will complete work alongside students more often, so they can see its value as well as have a model of the work done to a high standard.