More area students in dual-grade classes

Benito Rosales, 8, reads a book across from Nelly Villa, 7, on Monday afternoon at Heritage Elementary School. Students of Nicole Anderson's class consist of second- and third-graders. Due to the budget and continued low enrollment, the number of dual-grade classrooms have increased this year for Lodi Unified School District. (Brian Feulner/News-Sentinel)

More area students in dual-grade classes

Administrators fault class size-reduction, declining enrollment

By Jennifer Bonnett
News-Sentinel Staff Writer

Tuesday, August 25, 2009 5:48 AM PDT

Comments (49 comment(s))

There are more dual-grade elementary classrooms in Lodi Unified School District than in years past, partly due to class-size reductions and declining enrollment at some schools.

Last school year, there were 22 combined-grade elementary schools, while there are 36 this year, according to Catherine Pennington, assistant superintendent of primary education.

There can be challenges to teaching two grades at once, especially when it comes to benchmark examinations and ensuring students in each grade are learning the appropriate curriculum for their testing level. Among other things, teachers have to schedule their day to address two grade-level curriculums.

"We are very fortunate to have a very supportive and strong staff that is always willing to assist the teachers with a combo class," Heritage Elementary School Principal Maria Cervantes said of her experiences with dual-grade classes.

At Heritage, where there are two such classes, third-graders go into a third-grade classroom to receive instruction in math, allowing the combo class teacher to provide direct math instruction to second-grade students.

"My role is to provide the highest level of support to the students and teacher," Cervantes said. "Staying focused on academic achievement and addressing the needs of our students is foremost."

At Heritage, there is a combined secondand third-grade classroom, and on Monday, a similar dual-grade class for kindergarten and first-grade started.

Much of the work is done in the front office. Cervantes said a lot goes into determining who will be enrolled in these combination classes. She works closely with the district's intervention teachers to develop the class lists for both of these classes.

"We focus on level maturity and ability to do work independently," she said.

This setup allows students who may be able to do higher level work to do so, or the reverse, in reteaching concepts or skills students have not yet mastered, according to Cervantes.

The principal also chooses students who have good attendance and positive behavior to be placed in these classes.

While the uptick in the number of dual-grade classes is attributed directly to attempting to keep enrollment at lower levels, the district's smaller, rural schools have always had them since there are fewer students per grade on those campuses, according to Pennington. She has not received any feedback from parents or teachers about this year's increase in such classrooms.

Having had more than one child attend Lockeford Elementary School, parent Gary Reiff is unfazed by combined-grade classes.

His eldest, who now attends Houston Middle School as a seventh-grader, went through two combined courses, while his middle child is currently enrolled in a grades four-and-five combination as fifth-grader.

In the beginning, he was concerned that the teacher's time would be split between students and that his child would be affected.

"It didn't affect my kid one bit," Reiff said. "It takes a very skilled teacher to teach a combo class, and we're lucky to have skilled teachers at Lockeford. If you have the right teacher, your student won't be affected at all. A good teacher can handle it."

In Galt Joint Elementary School District, where classes start this week, there will be four combination classrooms — the same as last school year, Superintendent Karen Schauer said.

And at Oak View Elementary School in Acampo, there are only two dual-grade classrooms despite the district's small size, according to Superintendent Michael Scully. Last school year, there were three.

Schauer sees the benefits of a such a set-up far outweigh the potentially negative aspects.

"Students at the lower grade level who hear and see the curriculum above grade level experience 'frontloaded learning' that can help them for greater success in the next school year," she said. "Students at the higher grade level who see and hear curriculum below their grade level have opportunities to review and better remember foundational content standards."

The only drawback, she said, is increased planning time for teachers who must address standards for two different grade levels at one time.

Like Lodi Unified, Judy Bullard, Galt Elementary's director of curriculum and a former school principal, said the administration takes extra efforts to hand-select students who can be successful in such an environment. Most are at grade level or above and are independent learners.

"With proactive placement by the principal, coupled with a strong teacher who has effective planning skills, this experience can be very effective," Schauer said.

Contact reporter Jennifer Bonnett at jenniferb@lodinews.com.

A parent's guide to a combined grade classroom

Schools group students from two grades in one classroom to balance class size across the school and to keep the number of students in primary classes low. Combined-grade classes are not new — they have always been a common part of the school experience.

— Teachers are highly trained to balance individual learning needs.

Walk into any classroom, and you will find children at various stages of social, physical and intellectual development. No two children are exactly the same, even if they're the same age. Each child has unique learning needs — strengths and areas that need improvement. Learning styles and preferences are unique to each student.

That's true of same-grade classrooms, just like combined grade groups.

— Students in a combined grade class follow expectations for their specific grade.

Just as in same-grade classes, teachers in combined grades use a wide range of teaching strategies to make sure they cover all of the curriculum expectations.

Children in combined-grade classes will spend time learning as a whole class, in small groups and individually. Sometimes they will be grouped based on a specific task, and other times the teacher will group them based on their learning needs.

The teacher may have the whole class participate in a common activity, followed by small group or individual work on grade-specific curriculum expectations. For example, in a first-and-second combined grade class, when teaching the life systems strand of science, the teacher might start by showing a video about a specific animal. The first-grade students would do a follow-up activity to identify the characteristics and needs of living things, while the second-grade students would focus on growth and change in animals.

— Students are not always learning new information or concepts — they also need to review, consolidate and refine their learning and build on previous learning to do a more complex task.

In a fifth-sixth combined-grade math class, for example, the teacher might review the concept of place value with the whole class. Then the students would work on the grade-specific expectations. Fifth-grade students would be practicing math problems with place values up to 100,000 and decimals to hundredths, while sixth-grade students would work on problems with place values up to 1,000,000 and decimals to thousandths.

Even in subjects such as social studies and science, which have different topics to cover in different grades, the curriculum expectations in each grade are not just about the facts students are expected to learn. There are many common skills for students to learn, such as research, scientific inquiry, experimentation and problem solving.

The teacher might present research skills to the whole class, then assign grade-specific research projects. At other times, the teacher will present two different lessons to the students, based on the different curriculum for the two grades. While working with one grade level of students, the teacher will have the other students do individual or group projects or work in learning centers in the classroom.

Studies show that students in combined grade classes learn as well as other students.

— You may be concerned about how well your child will learn in a combined-grade class. Years of research show that students in combined grades do just as well academically as students in single-grade classes. In fact, some students actually do better in language and reading.

You may also wonder about the emotional impact on your child — will your child receive the same amount of individual attention from the teacher in a combined grade as in a single-grade class? It's important to understand that the number of students in the class, not the grade structure, determines the amount of time the teacher has to spend with each individual student.

Students in combined classes often do better emotionally and socially as they have been found to foster greater independence, better social skills and increased motivation to learn.

Source: Peel School District in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada

Reader Feedback

Lodian wrote on Sep 1, 2009 5:23 PM:

" I believe that in general most kids will fair better in a one grade level class than kids in a combo class, especially if the combo class has 30 or more kids. And most parents I know feel the same as all hoped their kids wouldn't be one of the kids placed in those combo classes. It was always a concern when there was a combo class any given year in elementary school. "

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