What were the teaching strategies, outcomes and operational issues of mixed age teaching?
End of year interviews and classroom observations of classes in which pupils were judged to have made good progress indicated that the following teaching strategies were useful in managing the NLS in small schools: • having high expectations of the whole class • maintaining a focus on dealing with objectives in depth, rather than covering material for different year groups more thinly • using a variety of texts to cater for all abilities and interests, with appropriate support/extension • using targeted and focused questions. In other words, it was worth concentrating on fewer objectives and using differentiation to cover the range of year groups. Contrary to initial expectations, there was no measurable difference in reading progress between the oldest or youngest year groups in a two, three or four year group class (as measured by change in standardised reading scores). Although teachers were concerned that younger pupils might be left behind, the authors report encouraging examples
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