5th Grade Departmentalization

[Anonymous]

Why are not all 5th grades departmentalized? I have a fifth grade right now who currently loves departmenalization. He feels very prepared for middle school. However, we will be moving next year and I just found out my now fourth grader will not have the same situation at the new school as they are not departmentalized. It was my understanding that all of the elementary schools had departmentalized 5th grades. Why is this not a uniform policy across the county?

[Anonymous]

Each principal can decide what works best with their staff and teacher-to-student ratios. Your 4th grader will experience some departmentalization next year, as they’ll have a classroom teacher, a music teacher, an art teacher, and a PE teacher, and they’ll transition to those various locations in the school. It’s not crucial for the kids to have a different teacher for science and math than they have for reading, writing and social studies.

[Anonymous]

Because they don't have the staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because they don't have the staff.

It doesn’t change staffing numbers at all, but okay.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Each principal can decide what works best with their staff and teacher-to-student ratios. Your 4th grader will experience some departmentalization next year, as they’ll have a classroom teacher, a music teacher, an art teacher, and a PE teacher, and they’ll transition to those various locations in the school. It’s not crucial for the kids to have a different teacher for science and math than they have for reading, writing and social studies.

As someone who’s been in exactly the OP’s situation, I disagree. Changing teachers for Science, Reading, and Math absolutely prepared my older kid to be better prepared for the varying expectations of different teachers and needing to take their things with them from class to class. Much different than leaving all your stuff and going to art/music/p.e once a day.

[Anonymous]

My child already switches classes for math in third. Is this how all schools in MCPS do it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child already switches classes for math in third. Is this how all schools in MCPS do it?

Many schools do, but not all schools. It is up to the principal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child already switches classes for math in third. Is this how all schools in MCPS do it?

Many schools do, but not all schools. It is up to the principal.

To expand upon this, different schools have different needs. The number of students in a grade, student academic needs, and staffing allocation decisions within the school can lead to departmentalization making sense in one school, but not so much in another.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child already switches classes for math in third. Is this how all schools in MCPS do it?

Many schools do, but not all schools. It is up to the principal.

To expand upon this, different schools have different needs. The number of students in a grade, student academic needs, and staffing allocation decisions within the school can lead to departmentalization making sense in one school, but not so much in another.

Elementary SDT here… staffing allocations have nothing to do with it. If we have allocations for 4 teachers, we don’t need additional teachers for departmentalization. There would be the same number of students. It just requires scheduling. It should absolutely be uniform across the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because they don't have the staff.

It doesn’t change staffing numbers at all, but okay.

I think it's just more logistically complicated because you need to have an even number of math and ELA teachers, figure out a schedule where they have even numbers of instructional blocks which is often complicated because the math instructional block is shorter than the ELA one so I don't know if the Math teacher also covers science/social studies (?)

[Anonymous]

Wouldn't they have to do some kind of departmentalization because not every kid qualifies for compacted math so probably there's only one or two designated teachers who are teaching that while the other teachers are teaching regular math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child already switches classes for math in third. Is this how all schools in MCPS do it?

This is more common starting in 4th. Our ES used to do this.

Now starting in 4th, in each grade two teachers teach math/science, two teachers teach ELA/social studies, and students spend half the day with each teacher. As PP said, between specials, instructional time, and number of teachers, this can be complicated to work out but at our school it was possible.

[Anonymous]

So what’s the schedule with 3 teachers? C

[Anonymous]

On the off chance that the reason preparing your child for middle school departmentalization is a concern is because your child has ADHD, as a parent of an older student, I will share with you that both my child’s psychiatrist and guidance counselor shared that changing classrooms and teachers is actually good for students with ADHD because it gives them a break with some movement, and the new surroundings and different teacher also give them a reset that can help them get focused for the next subject. My child has pretty severe ADHD and very mild autism and departmentalization has not been an issue for her.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So what’s the schedule with 3 teachers? C

One teaches math, the other reading/writing, the other ss/sci/health. Not difficult.