In our school, in the home class, they group kids with same reading level, but in this Reading Initiative class, they grouped kids with mixed level. That is not fair to kids.

At our school "Reading Initiative" is just a way to have smaller classes for reading by adding an extra teacher or two. Its not the higher or lower group but an assortment to get a class of kids at various levels. Within each class (reading teacher included) there are low, medium and higher level groups.

Anonymous wrote:OP here: The group seems to be mixed in terms of reading level. I've reached out to the teacher so hopefully I'll know more soon. I don't want to be a whining parent, "Why wasn't my kid chosen?," without knowing more.

My friend is one of these teachers and the way she explained it, it's for the schools that have a lot of students in the classroom (i.e not title 1 schools with lower class sizes) and that the kids are from all different levels of reading. It's to take a little of the burden off the main teachers.

In my school they put names in a hat, it was not kids who needed extra help, it was actually just to make the class sizes in 1st and second grade smaller. The reading initiative teacher was the BEST teacher in the school and everyone wanted her.

OP here: The group seems to be mixed in terms of reading level. I've reached out to the teacher so hopefully I'll know more soon. I don't want to be a whining parent, "Why wasn't my kid chosen?," without knowing more.

I would ask the teacher.

I would assume it is for kids who need extra help.

This year DD entered first grade and a group of students across grade level have been chosen to participate in a reading initiative program. My understanding is that this pullout program is in place to help differentiate instruction and minimize class size. But nothing has been explained to parents about how students are selected to participate, goals of the initiative, curriculum, etc. Does anyone have experience with this program? Is this the new G&T program under another name? DD is not in this group, so maybe that's why I have so little information about it, but it seems a mystery to me from the outside.