Does anyone have feedback on cluster grouping of gifted kids in regular classrooms? Our school district clusters gifted kids in groups of 4 or 5 in a classroom and then does gifted pull outs one or two hours every week depending upon grade. However, when in the classroom, the gifted kids are typically seated next to three or four kids in a regular classroom environment instead of being grouped together.

Other parents have expressed some concern over the groupings and I was wondering if anyone else had encountered this and/or had any feedback or suggestions.

Thank you.

Well,
I'm not sure if this is the same but in dd's school they do try to differentiate by grouping kids of different abilities. She's in a private school so there is no gifted program. This grouping just makes sense to me. Dd was in a math group in her class and a University student came and taught those kids who "got" the concepts faster than the others. Why make the faster kids "wait" for the slower ones to get it.
What exactly were the parents concerns over the groupings?

Here is an article on Cluster Grouping: http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/nrcgt/newsletter/spring96/sprng964.html.

I too am curious about the concerns - are they concerns that the grouping exists, or concerns that they aren't grouped enough? I'm also curious what the definition of gifted is and how many kids there are. If there are 5 classrooms of 20 first graders, you would likely have only 1 or 2 classrooms with a gifted cluster.

It is considered a very good way of meeting the needs of gifted children, without some of the problems of completely different classrooms. That being said, like anything it won't work well if the teacher isn't educated in and interested in gifted education and trained in differentiated instruction.

Seating arrangements shoudn't make a difference. At my DS's school at least, the kids rearrange themselves (or the teacher does) into any number of groups during the day (we don't have cluster grouping, but there are often small groups, like reading groups). It doesn't really matter who you sit next to for art, or writing practice. Maybe they intentionally do that if the gifted kids are together at other times, so that they get to know and interact with a number of different students?

Cat

No formal research, just our personal experience. DS's school does cluster grouping from 2nd thru 5th. It works very well for the students and the teachers for the most part.

The only concerns I have heard are from parents with HG+ kids. They have seen schools that say "well we cluster grouped them what more do you want?" without recognizing that a child may still be two to five years ahead of the cluster.

We have been lucky that DS's school agreed to a mid-year skip from 1st to 2nd and into the cluster. So he gained a full two academic years by making the move. It won't be enough for long but it'll likely be solid for another year. Then we'll have to work with the teacher.

I'm totally confused. As far as I know, there is no expectation that gifted kids sit near each other in cluster grouped classrooms. I think the ideas is that instead of having only one child per classroom with her or his hand raised for every question, that several of those kids are in the same classroom, while in the other classrooms a new group of kids is encouraged to answer more questions because they have a chance.

From what I've read, clustering is most valuable if the teacher pretests the whole class on the new material, and gives more advanced material to the kids who are ready for more advanced material. If the teachers go on teaching to their preconcieved notion of what kids need then there is limited value to clustering beyond the social benifits.

Our local public school has no formal clustering program, however, several years they have 'stocked the pond' in my son's classroom in an attempt to meet is socioemotional needs. They don't recognise the need to be educationally challenged, they don't see the connection between developing good work ethic and having educationally challenging material but they do see that my son needs other bright kids to have fun at school, and I am grateful. ((shrugs))

Grinity

Our school does have the cluster kids sit together for math and language instruction. But for the rest of the day they are wherever. Sometimes together, sometimes not. I'm not sure the sitting part is really relevant as much as the ability to deliver content in a small group.

The initial concern was that gifted children were not grouped enough. There are about 20 children in DD's grade that were identified as gifted out of about 80 children total. Gifted threshold at the school is lower and based on CogAT scores (85%) although some of the kids are artistically gifted. There were four classrooms total and each had 4 to 6 "gifted kids" in the class. Of the gifted population, there are 3 children that are considered to be "high ability" learners out of the gifted population, but were separated in different classrooms. Gifted pullouts were one hour a week and each pullout consisted of two classrooms which totaled about 10 kids.

However, regular classroom desk configuration varied all year, but DD was included in a desk cluster of other gifted children for only about one six week period (similar situation for other gifted kids). There was no special grouping of the gifted kids for reading or math. In reading differential assignments were given based on reading ability, but the gifted kids of like reading abilities were never grouped together.

In my DD's situation, she was frequently sat next to low learners or problem children. Teacher said she was really good with these kids and had a very positive impact on them (and therefore this was considered to be for the "better good" of the class as a whole). On the flip side of this, sitting next to the distracting children caused a lot of stress on my DD where she could not concentrate on her work and grades dropped like a rock in one case (when she was sitting next to someone that could not sit still and constantly kicked her desk, drummed on his, or talked constantly). In addition, on projects she was grouped with lower learners and ended up with lower grades. Teacher said she was picked by the lower learner to be their partner.

Other parents have expressed some concern over the groupings, but they mostly want to see the gifted kids in a single class or want to see longer pullouts and/or special pullouts for the higher reading and math abilities.

I was looking for feedback and/or examples of optimal grouping that has worked (or maybe not) with other gifted children. If there are any other the platforms/class designs that work well, they will be passed on to my DD's school.

Thank you.

Interesting...the school calls it clustering as long as it is in groups of at least 5 kids.

Our cluster has 8 GT kids, 6 "high achievers" and 10 other students. All the GT kids are in one class.

The school is small and there are no pullouts. The class below my DS has 22 students ID'd GT out of 64 so they'll have two clusters.

Our elementary school clusters identified kids in two classrooms(6-7 classes per grade) and then fills the rest of the spots in the cluster classroom with suspected GT children who have not yet been formally identified and other known high performing students. This is helpful for the teachers to not have to teach to the full range of abilities in each grade. It also seems good for the kids because the overall pace of the class is faster than the non cluster classes.

Thank you for all the feedback! I would like to go one step further though. One of the arguments for using gifted clusters of five kids is that it brings the rest of the class up to a higher learning level. Based on my conversations with a teacher friend at another school district, she said that in her experience there is a huge variance between classes with 5+ gifted children and classes with one or two gifted children. (She says the classroom discusses and explores the information taught at entirely a different level--good for the 5+ gifted cluster, but not good for the 1-2 child gifted class). Gifted clusters of 5+ kids will lift the entire class to a higher level, but in the classes with only 1 or 2 gifted children, it will bring the gifted kids down the average level of the class.

I think that the public schools are purposefully trying to group the gifted kids in order to maximize their overall school performance (i.e., not so much to advocate for the gifted kids, but to enhance the overall performance of the school).

Does anyone have any examples or resources for clusters of 5+ kids as compared to larger groups? I would love feedback on what an optimal class size number of gifted kids would be. Thank you.