Departmentalized Instruction Model 4th and 5th Grades

[Anonymous]

We just got an email from our ES that rising 4th and 5th grade will now implement a departmentalized instruction model whereby teachers focus on special subject areas rather than all subjects.

How does this work in practice? Will my 4th grader have a separate teacher for every single subject?

Right now in 3rd grade he already has two separate teachers who cover core classes (ie one for math, science, and social studies and the other for reading and writing).

Curious if this is being implemented across many MCPS ES or is this specific to ours.

[Anonymous]

Lots of upper ES do this. It helps the teachers do more specific preps and it helps the kids get a change of scenery, teaching style, etc. We had 3 teachers. One did science/social studies, one did reading and the 3rd did math. One of those three was also your homeroom and writing teacher so you’d be with that person more of the day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Lots of upper ES do this. It helps the teachers do more specific preps and it helps the kids get a change of scenery, teaching style, etc. We had 3 teachers. One did science/social studies, one did reading and the 3rd did math. One of those three was also your homeroom and writing teacher so you’d be with that person more of the day.

+1. It also helps ease the transition to middle school.

[Anonymous]

It depends on how many teachers there are.

When there are an even number, they may do Math/Science and ELA/social studies. One year, my kids rotated through three teachers and did 90 on math with one, 90 mins of ELA with another, and 90 mins split between science/social studies (alternating) and what they called "enrichment." That 45 mins daily of enrichment was sort of like WIN now, only it wasn't by level. The teacher would give some kids part of the ELC curriculum and others support.

[Anonymous]

As a career educator, I love departmentalized instruction for upper elementary! I wish they did it sooner in MCPS as it’s partly why the literacy and math instruction has been crappy IMO.

Departmentalized instruction also helps kids transition from ES to MS. My current 5th grader has a HR teacher for social studies and science plus a separate math teacher and a third teacher just for ELA. They are placed with one of these 3 teachers depending on their FIT assignment for that quarter

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When there are an even number, they may do Math/Science and ELA/social studies.

Our school had this. Kids had two teachers: one in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

[Anonymous]

Growing up in VA many decades ago when ES went through 6th grade, we had 2 teachers in grade 5 and 3 or 4 in Grade 6.