To me, it makes sense that the gifted children are pulled into classes together that can move at the speed and/or depth needed to make sure they are challenged. However there are parents of the children not in the gifted classes complaining because they say it means their children are grouped with more of the children who need a slower pace than normal, so their child is not being educated at the appropriate level.
I suspect what is happening here is that while the gifted kids at the upper levels of ability in the class are pulled out, the group of kids left in the mixed-ability class is taught at a pace/level that the lower ability kids are able to keep up with. There is a continuum of abilities in any one given mixed-ability classroom, and while we're here parenting kids at the upper upper end, there are also a lot of kids (at least in my district) who are in-between low average and not-quite-across-the-borderline-gifted who are also sitting in mixed-ability classrooms not being taught to their ability level. As a parent, I want my children to be able to work at an appropriate level of challenge, whether or not my child is PG, HG, MG or not-at-all-G but still quite capable of learning more than is being taught.
Has anyone had experience where their gifted children are in a mixed-ability classroom and still get an challenging, appropriate level instruction? How the teacher make this work?
This has sorta-kinda worked for my ds - and it's dependent (imo) on the teachers. He's had great teachers in his current school who push all of the students to think deeper. I am not quite sure how to explain what happens, but I can see the results in his thought processes, in his writing, and in the effort he wants to put into his work. It's not ideal (and he will tell you he wants more than anything to be in class with "the smart students") but he has been challenged and he has learned quite a bit and he's been much happier with these teachers than he was in his previous school where it felt to him like the majority of classroom time was spent either managing (in a reactive rather than proactive way) kids who were always goofing off or simply having mind-numbingly boring discussions.
I feel like *I* had some positive in-class differentiation back when I was in elementary and middle school, but I think it was partly due to living in a less pc-time when people weren't as quick to complain about ability-grouping. Part of it is also personality and social situation. I liked knowing I was in the top groups - it gave me a sense of accomplishment (we had to work to stay there - if we goofed off and didn't do our work we would end up moving down, even if we were uber-smart and knew everything - so it wasn't entirely 100% about ability, it had a piece of achievement and work ethic tied to it). I also liked that I had friends in my top group - usually the same consistent set of friends, 2 girls that I lived near enough to that we could be playmates outside of school.
The classroom situations I remember liking a lot were ability grouping for reading in early elementary and math in particular in middle school. It's not the subjects that set them apart, just the way in which they worked and in how they felt. It felt good, not different. In each situation all the kids were working in groups, not just that one top group. I'd say there were usually 4-5 groups in a class or 20-30 kids. The teacher spent time with each group in most of these situations. In our math in middle school (this was the math class before Algebra) the teacher didn't spend really any time with our group and I was ok with that because math was my thing and I didn't need someone to teach it to me and neither did the other kids I was working with. We could ask questions if we had them, but I rarely had them. I really liked being able to work independently in that way where I was capable. Once we were in Algebra, we were no longer ability grouped.
I don't think we were ever ability grouped in science, which is ironically my passion and where I have spent my career. Once we were in middle school we were tracked into honors vs not-honors classes across the board, so even though we weren't ability grouped we were skipped ahead in science. Once we were in high school we had a wide array of classes in science to choose from, and we were allowed to take advanced courses when we were ready, not based on what grade we were in.
polarbear
