Stumbling blocks and reflection

Teacher and student reflections

The teachers found some interesting pluses to the trial. They included:

• gaining a greater understanding of all the Grade 5 / 6 students
• developing a sense of shared responsibility of the two classes
• the opportunity to receive feedback from others of your students
• the opportunity for some students to work away from others and develop friendship groups and unity between the classes
• particular students spending more time on task than they did generally in the classroom.

The students used the Plus, Minus, Interesting (PMI) thinking strategy to reflect on the changed groupings. The results of their consideration were recorded in a diagram.

Student PMI diagram

Difficulties encountered

Despite the success of the project, there were some difficulties.

The following are examples of problems encountered by the teams:

• staff shortages due to illness or professional learning commitments which meant that if the principal wasn't able to take a group, the groups reverted to their original structure
• the school was undergoing some major building redevelopment, so one group was based in the library and with the Music room in use on Tuesdays, another group had to work in a small space generally used for after-school activities
• one group teacher found that there were vast differences in students' abilities and reflected that simply providing open-ended tasks was not enough; more differentiation was required.

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