From a teacher's blog post about trying reach students in their zone of proximal development. Read the entire post and you'll laugh, you'll cry.
http://kitchentablemath.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-gerbils.htmlWe proposed to place all middle schoolers (6-8) regardless of age, grade level, or hat size, into cohorts whose memberships were determined by academic readiness and to allow for periodic assessments that would allow kids to migrate as their performance dictated. To the extent that we had the resources to support a number of such 'ZPD pods' we would create as many cohorts as possible and each teacher would take on a range of such groups in shortened, focused, classes.
