Teaching For a Mixed Age Class
When designing curriculum, I think a lot about the right level of challenge. Too easy means boredom and disengagement. Too hard means stress and discouragement.
Finding the perfect balance, especially across a group of students with different abilities, is what separates great learning from the average school experience.
At Inner Fire, we use several strategies to meet each student at their learning edge:
Personalize -- For math, coding, and Mandarin we fully tailor the teaching to each student's level. Even if all students were in the same grade, ability will vary and it's hard to mix different levels together: you can't teach algebra to students still working on multiplication, and you wouldn't waste an advanced speaker's time on "ni hao". Instead, we determine the student's current level, and start them at the appropriate spot on each curriculum.
Make hard things easier -- In our English curriculum we'll mostly read classic youth-oriented literature like Hatchet and The Westing Game, but also Twelfth Night and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Can 8-year-olds properly follow these adult works? Aside from the most gifted, probably not on their own. But by reading together in class, with frequent pauses to go over the meaning and subtext of each passage, we can meet our younger learners at their level of understanding while still introducing the class to great and complex writing.
Ask open-ended questions (or, "make easy things harder") -- In History and Science, we like uncovering facts but even more than that we love asking questions and making interpretations. Not just "what color was the precipitate" or "what were the food sources of early nomads" but also "what do we think that tell us?" and "what if it was ____ instead?" Big questions are much more interesting for more advanced students while still being accessible to everyone.
Enjoy the arts! -- Art is amazing for many reasons, not least of which that it can always meet any student's edge. During our school year we'll be making portraits, building string sculptures, acting drama scenes, composing poems, coding music videos and many more creative projects. In each case, student ability and effort is unboundedly rewarded with beautiful pieces, and it's okay to relax and just have fun with it too.
Is it hard to do all this? Apart from personalization, I struggle to see why these strategies wouldn't work for any classroom. They do run contrary to a culture of grade standards and right/wrong answers, but if you're willing to give that up you'll unlock a whole new level of learning.
Sebastian 07/21/2023
