Teachers: As the second half of the school year gets underway, it’s a good time to take a look at that “developmental cluster” age of your class you may have explored in the fall. Those who read this blog regularly or have read my book Yardsticks will be familiar with developmental clusters. If not, you can check out a couple of archive categories here on the blog: Under Developmentally Appropriate Curriculum, see “The Birthday Cluster,” and under Child Development, see “The Annual Birthday Check-up.” And you’ll find a full explanation of how to find the developmental cluster of your class in Appendix A of Yardsticks, page 195.
During the second half of the year, teachers always notice changes in children’s behavior and in the approaches they take to routines and expectations. Some classes seem to do better than others. When we observe and pay attention to the shifting patterns of developmental growth occurring in the class over the course of the school year, we can make adjustments on the basis of what we know about age-appropriate expectations. When we do so, we can expect steady improvement in classroom climate and the effectiveness of our instructional practices.
But if we keep our routines static and unchanging throughout the year, we’re more likely to have difficulty and more challenging management issues as the year progresses. This is true as we assess each child’s growth as well as the overall shift taking place in each classroom’s “developmental cluster.”
Children respond well to our noticing and responding to their “growing up” needs. This is true for parents and their children as well. Changing chores and morning and evening routines depending on the age and the issues you might expect from a child at a given age can make a big difference in your relationships.
Growing up, of course, is full of downs as well as ups, and we can be honest and responsive with individual children and our classes in this respect. I remember how I responded to one fifth grade class that hit its eleven-year-old, feisty and quite oppositional stride very early one spring. “I put our desks in rows over the weekend,” I told them one Monday morning, “because I realized our talking and practicing about cooperating really worked in the first half of the year. But there’s a new kind of energy in our room right now, and we have to figure out how to listen and learn together in new ways, and we still have to get our work done. So we’ll work on figuring this out in class meeting, but in the meantime, we’re not going to do our academics in our old groups for awhile.”
In rows, some kids enjoyed feeling older, sitting as they would in some middle schools. Others thought about how much they liked working together. Eventually they figured out a way to get back to working cooperatively, in small groups, more respectful of their teacher and each other.
Try this kind of developmental observation and adjustment in your own class and tell us how it works for you!
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Dear Leslie – So nice of you to let me know your good news! I’m sure you, your administrators, parents and kids will reap the benefits of your recommendation. Chip
Hi Chip,
I wanted to follow up on our conversation about 4th graders and self-contained classrooms. In my bid to have our 4th grade reverted back to a self-contained classroom, I shared our conversation on your blog with my administrators.
I am happy to share with you that they have decided to have our fourth grade be self-contained next year and I will be one of the teachers. I am so excited about next year and so happy for the kids.
Thanks for your input!
Leslie
Leslie Thank you for your question and clear insight! I couldn’t agree with you more. While we flirted with the idea of earlier departmentalization at the school where I was principal most recently, I’m glad we never took that step. I know we were responding to the pressures of NCLB and curriculum pressures we were feeling as teachers and administrators, but in the end, I believe the children do better in elementary school – certainly through fourth grade – self contained. Fourth graders, as you mentioned, have so much trouble with anxiety and performance and comparing each other and competition. And the tests get harder, etc, etc. You are right. As a charter, you should rethink this carefully. In 5th grade having students switch for one subject is good practice for middle school. I could go on … Can other blog readers weigh in???
Hi Chip,
I wanted to ask your opinion about something. I am a fifth grade teacher at a K-8 charter school in inner city Philadelphia. The way our school is organized currently is that grades K-3 are self contained but in 4th, 5th, & 6th grade, the kids switch between two teachers. (In middle school, they have four teachers.) I much prefer being a teacher of a self-contained classroom because I feel that I can create and build on a much more cohesive community that way. Perhaps more importantly, I feel like I don’t get to know the kids as fully or as well when I have more than one class. My question is do you think that 4th graders are developmentally ready for this kind of switching? My gut feeling with 13 years of teaching experience at the 4th and 5th grade level is that even 5th graders would do better in a self-contained class, but certainly 4th graders shouldn’t be switching. They need the security and consistency of one teacher to counteract their anxiety about everything. What is your opinion?
Thanks,
Leslie Leff
(RC Consulting teacher)