Re: Looping

[terri-hjelm@comcast.net]

I also had the fabulous experience of teaching in a school that used this model to put all the classes together like this except for math for about five years.  We tried to begin the year with classes that had 10 students each from each grade level.  Most seventh and eighth graders were repeaters unless we had to make a move to better meet student needs.  After five or six years we pulled out science to provide grade-alike classes but kept Literacy, Social Studies, and Writing in the mixed-age groupings.  I never experienced anything more positive for community building.  We were family.  However there was pretty strong evidence that we were not doing enough to build strong achievement.  There were no textbooks that really fit our program.  That meant we really had to recreate our own curriculae for each unit.  In the end that wore most of us down as teachers.  I personally began to long for a more traditional system along with many of my collegues.  However, I should have been car
eful about what I wished for.  When we finally got grade-alike classes I really disliked it and decided to retire after three years of that.  The classroom pace and management issues were so different.  I didn't realize how much I'd relied on older helping younger, expected routines, and traditions.  When  you rotate a new class every year, students have much less expectation and buy-in.  

I've been gone from this list for about eight months.  It is very nice to be back.

Terri Hjelm

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Kruchma@aol.com 

> Cari, Maribeth, and Interested Others, 
> 
> One of the best parts of teaching middle school for me was being with and 
> teaching students from one or more years to the next. We did this in our home 
> base program, which was conceived in the 1980's by many of us on the staff 
> who are now retired--and thus the class/program is no longer like this--but for 
> about six years we looped our home base classes, composed of a total group 
> of about 20 or less sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students in a mix. So 
> as the eighth graders finished the year and moved on to h.s., we welcomed 
> five to seven new sixth graders in the fall to start a new year. The students 
> were wonderful at working with one another and learning social and 
> intellectual skills from their older and younger classmates. This set-up also 
> supported 
> the students getting to know more students in the larger community, the 
> school. Much of what will determine the success of any new classroom set-up 
> is 
> the continuous community-building you foster among the students--as well as 
> your own positive attitude toward the change. 
> 
> Best of luck as you try and tweak new classroom arrangements! 
> 
> If you would like more information on this topic, check out Building an 
> Effective Middle School by Lou Romano and Nick Georgiady (1994). 
> 
> Mary Anna Kruch, Ph.D. 
> President-Elect, Michigan Council of Teachers of English 
> K-12 Writing & Literacy Consultant 
> kruchma@aol.com 
> 
> P.O. Box 561 
> Williamston, MI 48895 
> 517-655-1633 
> 
> "If education is to be done expertly, it must be done by the teachers 
> themselves who as experts use their own knowledge and understandings to define 
> in 
> particular pedagogic situations the problems that are worth solving and 
> soluble....education cannot be exercised mechanistically or according to 
> prescribed 
> programs and algorithms." (p. 33) 
> 
> Donna H. Kerr in The Ecology of School Renewal, John I. Goodlad, Ed. (1987) 
> 
> 
> 
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