s/o Gifted classes in DC schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Differentiation in the same classroom is impractical for DC, as the gaps are often far too wide. Tracking would be far more effective, if done properly. That means, the intent being to give them heavy remediation so that the students can ultimately all reach the same level. Essentially, it would be tailoring to to strengthen students where they are weakest, to ultimately bring them all up to the same level. The comment by a pp above about not being able to switch makes me wonder if the whole point is being missed.

Actually, you're wrong. It's doesn't matter how wide the gaps are, as long as you divide the class into guided reading groups according to reading level, and provided that you have leveled books for each level. It can be done, and it can done effectively. It's not easy. But there are schools that are doing this and doing it well. The difficult part is training students to work in stations independently so that they don't distract the teacher-led guided reading group.

What DCPS hasn't addressed is how to address wide gaps in math.

So although this can be done, it's not easy, and the students distract each other. And there's still the problem with gaps in math. Again - why wouldn't true tracking be a better solution?

Good question for Kaya or David Catania

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So although this can be done, it's not easy, and the students distract each other. And there's still the problem with gaps in math. Again - why wouldn't true tracking be a better solution?

If not managed well, the students can distract, but that's true for in any type of classroom. They can also be trained to work independently in stations. Some can be pulled out for other interventions.

[Anonymous]

Most of the time in these reading groups, one maybe two, groups per day actually read with the teacher. The rest read independently or with partners supposedly applying whatever reading strategy is being taught. My 4th grade kid reads independently for hours at home. He doesn't need another 6 - 8 hours of per week at school. What he would really benefit from is high quality literature read as a class, analyzed and discussed closely as a class led by the teacher. Ideally, the themes of the novel would then be woven into a challenging writing assignment or perhaps creating a play or movie setting the novel in a different time or place but keeping the themes and character traits.

This is an example of high level reading instruction. The HOURS per week spent on leveled guided reading groups/independent reading at our schools are almost a complete waste of time. Thankfully, my 4th grader will soon be moving on to a charter middle school that leaves this garbage curriculum behind

[Anonymous]

Good luck with the charter experience. Let us know how it works out for you.

[Anonymous]

Actually, have a kid there at charter for two years already getting a top notch education. No worries here!

[Anonymous]

Problem solved

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So although this can be done, it's not easy, and the students distract each other. And there's still the problem with gaps in math. Again - why wouldn't true tracking be a better solution?

If not managed well, the students can distract, but that's true for in any type of classroom. They can also be trained to work independently in stations. Some can be pulled out for other interventions.

You didn't answer the question. Why wouldn't tracking be a better solution?

[Anonymous]

It takes a huge amount of time and energy to continually assess, manage and coordinate kids effectively, a teacher's attention would be spread out tremendously. Instead, grouping students by ability can provide a far more effective way of working with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the time in these reading groups, one maybe two, groups per day actually read with the teacher. The rest read independently or with partners supposedly applying whatever reading strategy is being taught. My 4th grade kid reads independently for hours at home. He doesn't need another 6 - 8 hours of per week at school. What he would really benefit from is high quality literature read as a class, analyzed and discussed closely as a class led by the teacher. Ideally, the themes of the novel would then be woven into a challenging writing assignment or perhaps creating a play or movie setting the novel in a different time or place but keeping the themes and character traits.

This is an example of high level reading instruction. The HOURS per week spent on leveled guided reading groups/independent reading at our schools are almost a complete waste of time. Thankfully, my 4th grader will soon be moving on to a charter middle school that leaves this garbage curriculum behind

I agree 1000% I hope your kid joins ours at BASIS. Dc was immediately placed in Algebra I and could handle it. And they are reading actual books, writing actual essays, and learning actual English grammar (diagramming sentences!) and an actual language - Latin.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:and whatever you call it, it's not a bad thing

Except that it totally depends on having a good teacher. Our dc was reading Harry Potter and the 39 clues at home last year and we came in for our conference to find that dc's "just right books" included Frog and Toad Are Friends. To add insult to injury, they told us they had made that decision based on a recent eval and they did not want to retest dc (our suggestion) because dc might get "test anxiety." The librarian knew what was up, and was allowing dc to take out books that were not on dcs "just right" list. We had dc bring 39 clues books from home for reading time for the rest of the year, but REALLY....

the problem with this kind of system, which I approve of in the absence of ANYTHING better, is that it totally depends on the teacher to do accurate differentiation. Also, the school (a JKLM) does spend a lot of time dealing with some PARTICULAR problem students, and they have been that way since they arrived at the school. They are OOB and the teacher takes them out in the hall to speak with them privately about their bad behavior, but where does that leave the rest of the class?

PS, my dc is now finally in the highest reading/English group this year and the spelling and vocab words are a joke. DC is capable of way more. We joke about the "wordly wise" book because there is nothing else we can do, and try to get dc to ask when we use words dc does not completely understand, encourage the reading of newspapers, etc. DC aces the spelling and vocab tests. One of the more asinine exercises is spelling a word and then taking off one letter each time so that the result is a blank word instead of what you started with. DC has to do this with each word dc already knows how to spell and knows the meaning of.

Good at math but no one would know it because dc is getting 3s - as a matter of policy this school just seems not to award 4s until the end of the year. I honestly do not understand how so many kids from dc's school are getting into privates with their 3s until the last grading period of the year policy, and we DO have another child who is in trouble but you would never know it because the grades are the same and the comments are all positive. With basically one teacher all year one teacher can ruin a year or make it the best year of dcs lives.

We mostly have good teachers, probably because we are in a JKLM and the teachers who are crappy mostly wash out after a year, but this is the school cluster that everyone seems to want to get into, that feeds into Deal and Wilson. So I just cannot imagine what is happening elsewhere where there are more problem students and less reading proficiency. My dc has scored 100 percent on the DC CAS since the first year dc took it, so I can only conclude that it is basically a joke as well. The idea that some schools had to cheat to get their scores up not only disgusts me because of the immorality of it, it makes me really really worried for the kids at those schools whose answers needed to be erased because they were wrong....

I was with you PP until you described the children in need of redirection as OOB (as if that moniker had anything to do with your point). It sort of tainted your whole post for me.

Sorry but there is ONE child who has been OOB since K, been in my child's class every year, and is physically and verbally abusive to teachers and students alike, and has consistently taken the teacher's time away from the rest of the kids. Furthermore, this kid thinks pulling my kid's chair out from under him/her is funny. We had to switch tables.

Yes we also have our fair share of IB troublemakers, the difference is that when those parents get pulled in, they listen to the principal. The kids go to the guidance counselor. They get in trouble with their parents. They get private counseling if necessary. They repeat a grade if necessary. Heck sometimes when one of our dc is having problems with a particular child, we talk to the parents ourselves and that is the end of it.

This particular OOB kid apparently has no one - father dead, mother incarcerated, cries when no one shows up for performances. I am not saying I do not feel sorry for this child, and one of my dc is now learning a lot about dysfunctional families in one of the best DC charter schools, but I just think that this kid should not have been in the school in the first place, and the vast majority of misbehavior that happens and continues year after year is from OOB kids who do not seem to have family support to come down hard on them early. We are talking 1st grade here folks in a JKLM school.

My dcs can learn how lucky they are to have an intact family where no one calls the police on the other parent once they get to middle school (and they have). But we deliberately moved to this neighborhood to try to avoid this kind of dysfunctional behavior so early that one of my dc is having trouble learning how to read due not to snotty embassy kids or others who think they are better than everyone else but due to a single OOB kid (there are only like ten max in the entire school), and the worst behavior that cannot be corrected comes from them. And yes before you ask they tend to be minority children, and so are mine. It is, for lack of a better term, "ghetto behavior." But please don't judge so quickly. I don't want these kids as the "only" other blank race/color/national origin kids in with my children, so that they are lumped together by the teachers, or more often, just plain ignored by the teachers because they are so busy dealing with these single OOB kids, who are incorrigible sometimes. Someone said a rising tide raises all boats? One bad apple can destroy even a good teacher's ability to teach the rest of their class.

[Anonymous]

Sorry just forgot to add I never want my kids to behave this way because it is ok because other AA kids do, and we did not want them exposed to this until they were more mature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the time in these reading groups, one maybe two, groups per day actually read with the teacher. The rest read independently or with partners supposedly applying whatever reading strategy is being taught. My 4th grade kid reads independently for hours at home. He doesn't need another 6 - 8 hours of per week at school. What he would really benefit from is high quality literature read as a class, analyzed and discussed closely as a class led by the teacher. Ideally, the themes of the novel would then be woven into a challenging writing assignment or perhaps creating a play or movie setting the novel in a different time or place but keeping the themes and character traits.

This is an example of high level reading instruction. The HOURS per week spent on leveled guided reading groups/independent reading at our schools are almost a complete waste of time. Thankfully, my 4th grader will soon be moving on to a charter middle school that leaves this garbage curriculum behind

That's unfortunate. I work with each of my four guided reading groups for 30 min each day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:and whatever you call it, it's not a bad thing

Except that it totally depends on having a good teacher. Our dc was reading Harry Potter and the 39 clues at home last year and we came in for our conference to find that dc's "just right books" included Frog and Toad Are Friends. To add insult to injury, they told us they had made that decision based on a recent eval and they did not want to retest dc (our suggestion) because dc might get "test anxiety." The librarian knew what was up, and was allowing dc to take out books that were not on dcs "just right" list. We had dc bring 39 clues books from home for reading time for the rest of the year, but REALLY....

the problem with this kind of system, which I approve of in the absence of ANYTHING better, is that it totally depends on the teacher to do accurate differentiation. Also, the school (a JKLM) does spend a lot of time dealing with some PARTICULAR problem students, and they have been that way since they arrived at the school. They are OOB and the teacher takes them out in the hall to speak with them privately about their bad behavior, but where does that leave the rest of the class?

PS, my dc is now finally in the highest reading/English group this year and the spelling and vocab words are a joke. DC is capable of way more. We joke about the "wordly wise" book because there is nothing else we can do, and try to get dc to ask when we use words dc does not completely understand, encourage the reading of newspapers, etc. DC aces the spelling and vocab tests. One of the more asinine exercises is spelling a word and then taking off one letter each time so that the result is a blank word instead of what you started with. DC has to do this with each word dc already knows how to spell and knows the meaning of.

Good at math but no one would know it because dc is getting 3s - as a matter of policy this school just seems not to award 4s until the end of the year. I honestly do not understand how so many kids from dc's school are getting into privates with their 3s until the last grading period of the year policy, and we DO have another child who is in trouble but you would never know it because the grades are the same and the comments are all positive. With basically one teacher all year one teacher can ruin a year or make it the best year of dcs lives.

We mostly have good teachers, probably because we are in a JKLM and the teachers who are crappy mostly wash out after a year, but this is the school cluster that everyone seems to want to get into, that feeds into Deal and Wilson. So I just cannot imagine what is happening elsewhere where there are more problem students and less reading proficiency. My dc has scored 100 percent on the DC CAS since the first year dc took it, so I can only conclude that it is basically a joke as well. The idea that some schools had to cheat to get their scores up not only disgusts me because of the immorality of it, it makes me really really worried for the kids at those schools whose answers needed to be erased because they were wrong....

I was with you PP until you described the children in need of redirection as OOB (as if that moniker had anything to do with your point). It sort of tainted your whole post for me.

Sorry but there is ONE child who has been OOB since K, been in my child's class every year, and is physically and verbally abusive to teachers and students alike, and has consistently taken the teacher's time away from the rest of the kids. Furthermore, this kid thinks pulling my kid's chair out from under him/her is funny. We had to switch tables.

Yes we also have our fair share of IB troublemakers, the difference is that when those parents get pulled in, they listen to the principal. The kids go to the guidance counselor. They get in trouble with their parents. They get private counseling if necessary. They repeat a grade if necessary. Heck sometimes when one of our dc is having problems with a particular child, we talk to the parents ourselves and that is the end of it.

This particular OOB kid apparently has no one - father dead, mother incarcerated, cries when no one shows up for performances. I am not saying I do not feel sorry for this child, and one of my dc is now learning a lot about dysfunctional families in one of the best DC charter schools, but I just think that this kid should not have been in the school in the first place, and the vast majority of misbehavior that happens and continues year after year is from OOB kids who do not seem to have family support to come down hard on them early. We are talking 1st grade here folks in a JKLM school.

My dcs can learn how lucky they are to have an intact family where no one calls the police on the other parent once they get to middle school (and they have). But we deliberately moved to this neighborhood to try to avoid this kind of dysfunctional behavior so early that one of my dc is having trouble learning how to read due not to snotty embassy kids or others who think they are better than everyone else but due to a single OOB kid (there are only like ten max in the entire school), and the worst behavior that cannot be corrected comes from them. And yes before you ask they tend to be minority children, and so are mine. It is, for lack of a better term, "ghetto behavior." But please don't judge so quickly. I don't want these kids as the "only" other blank race/color/national origin kids in with my children, so that they are lumped together by the teachers, or more often, just plain ignored by the teachers because they are so busy dealing with these single OOB kids, who are incorrigible sometimes. Someone said a rising tide raises all boats? One bad apple can destroy even a good teacher's ability to teach the rest of their class.

You should go private or STFU. Seriously. That kid deserves every opportunity to succeed. He/she deserves MORE because they don't have the advantages at home that your kids do. It's not the kid's fault that their family is trashed. The kid is doing the best he/she can in a bad situation.

I was that kid. My family sucked. My mom was an addict. My uncles were the neighborhood drug dealers. My dad was absent. I was sexually molested by an uncle. I was seriously messed up and struggling to keep my shit together. Despite that, I was a National Merit Scholar and excelled in school. It was tough, but I got my shit together.

From me to you, on behalf of that kid, fuck you. You are in a public school. Everyone has the right to use them. If you don't want to be around rabble like that kid or me, go to private school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of the time in these reading groups, one maybe two, groups per day actually read with the teacher. The rest read independently or with partners supposedly applying whatever reading strategy is being taught. My 4th grade kid reads independently for hours at home. He doesn't need another 6 - 8 hours of per week at school. What he would really benefit from is high quality literature read as a class, analyzed and discussed closely as a class led by the teacher. Ideally, the themes of the novel would then be woven into a challenging writing assignment or perhaps creating a play or movie setting the novel in a different time or place but keeping the themes and character traits.

This is an example of high level reading instruction. The HOURS per week spent on leveled guided reading groups/independent reading at our schools are almost a complete waste of time. Thankfully, my 4th grader will soon be moving on to a charter middle school that leaves this garbage curriculum behind

That's unfortunate. I work with each of my four guided reading groups for 30 min each day.

So that means the kids are left to do independent or group work for the other 1 and 1/2 hours??? Good luck with that. It seems to me that it would be more effective to ability group in separate classes which would allow the teacher to spend the entire time working with the kids instead of just one quarter of the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


You should go private or STFU. Seriously. That kid deserves every opportunity to succeed. He/she deserves MORE because they don't have the advantages at home that your kids do. It's not the kid's fault that their family is trashed. The kid is doing the best he/she can in a bad situation.

I was that kid. My family sucked. My mom was an addict. My uncles were the neighborhood drug dealers. My dad was absent. I was sexually molested by an uncle. I was seriously messed up and struggling to keep my shit together. Despite that, I was a National Merit Scholar and excelled in school. It was tough, but I got my shit together.

From me to you, on behalf of that kid, fuck you. You are in a public school. Everyone has the right to use them. If you don't want to be around rabble like that kid or me, go to private school.

So you think one kid has the right to deprive every other kid in the class of an education?? How is that supposed to help the troubled kid or the rest of the class for that matter. Troubled kids who disrupt on a continual basis need to be educated in a separate classroom until they learn not to disrupt. Every kid deserves an education that is not disrupted by others.