Thoughts on mixed ability classes

CookieMonster.x

Just wondering what everyone's opinions are on mixed ability classes.
My classes are all mixed and to be honest I don't like it. I'm aiming for high points but a lot of the time the class is held back because of people who don't to be in the class, who have no intention of doing higher level and who just disrupt the class the whole time. We won't be covering certain grammar topics in Irish because most people bar me and maybe 3 others maximum won't learn/wouldn't be able to learn it.
Does mixed ability work? I'm interested to hear whether it does actually bring people up or not.
Thanks.

0mega

They're crap, you can only go as fast as the weakest person and if you've got a load of people in the class that don't want to learn it gets dragged down by them.

kingcobra

I definitely don't agree with it either. First of all you get the messers who couldn't care less about learning anything and the teacher keeps trying to teach them which is futile. I think that if the classes weren't mixed ability both sides would benefit as they're both able to work hard on different things without conflicts

spurious

A class with messers and discipline problems is not mixed ability.
Being of lower ability does not make a student more likely to mess or cause problems. Being badly brought up does that.

user.name

Yeah I find in mix ability classes you tend to focus on ordinary level stuff mote than higher. This is how it is in my irish and I'm ordinary level

kingcobra

spurious wrote: »

A class with messers and discipline problems is not mixed ability.
Being of lower ability does not make a student more likely to mess or cause problems. Being badly brought up does that.

No obviously not, the majority of people with a lower ability are respectful however generally the messers, who don't listen in class, come from the less-abled side of the class

CookieMonster.x

I don't mean that they are all messers. I don't like te fact that there are people hi got Ds in junior cert maths and who don't even own a book in my honours maths class. I just don't like it when the standard is being brought down because some people are looking to scrape a pass.
Even some people down at the lower end of the class have said they wish it wasn't mixed and that they'd do better in a streamed class.

itsmekie

I agree its not fair that the people who want to learn have to suffer because of those who dont. We spend most of our french class listening to our teacher give out to the people who keep disrupting the class and then we end up getting nothing done

Leaving Cert Student

its a joke, the fluent irish speaker pushing for the A1 has to sit through lessons on the basic tenses because the paraguayan girl insists on taking honours!

En

In my school we are streamed for maths, english and irish and the rest of the classes are mixed.

I find that we move at a FAR slower pace in the mixed classes. I attend a rather large school so there are two/three classes for most of the option subjects. I generally dislike being around dumb messers who have no interest in whatever's being taught, but in my experience the people who thrive around these people are worse. Generally, the people who do the messing are seen as on a higher social standing than others, so people usually tag along with them and support their moronic behaviour in the hopes that their social standing increases somehow. In the more popular subjects (biology, geography, etc.) this is the general atmosphere.

That said, in the small mixed classes that I'm in (we only have 1 physics class and 1 chemistry class) you don't find messers and the environment is much better for learning. That said, it can be annoying when that one "slow" person in your class (we all have one lol) requires extra explanation and generally wastes time and holds the class back.

As for the streamed classes, you overall get the best of both worlds or a compromise at least

Nicole.

In my biology class we had a range between higher level to foundation level. There was no choice for anyone involved.

My school simply didn't have enough money to make more classes. Yes, I as a higher level student got held up a lot there because the teacher had to go through foundational level stuff with one of the students and we couldn't do much for those 15 minutes but the student was never disruptive. She always did her work it was just frustrating that there wasn't a better solution available, her SNA hours were cut etc. It was the same in my maths class; ordinary level mixed with foundation level but to be honest the ordinary level people were more disruptive than the person doing foundation e.g. pushing each other off desks. However, again there was time lost because the teacher had to teach the foundation level student individually.

I do think that people in this thread need to be careful though because you may view one person as dumb because you may be better than them in one subject but they may be much better than you in another subject that you may need help in.

Eathrin

Leaving Cert Student wrote: »

its a joke, the fluent irish speaker pushing for the A1 has to sit through lessons on the basic tenses because the paraguayan girl insists on taking honours!

But the problem is not with weaker students looking to do high level classes.
The problem lies in that there is not enough money spent on education in this country to accomodate all levels of ability.
Schools are generally more sympathetic towards weaker students who get more focus while brighter students are being limited.

Nicole.

Eathrin wrote: »

But the problem is not with weaker students looking to do high level classes.
The problem lies in that there is not enough money spent on education in this country to accomodate all levels of ability.
Schools are generally more sympathetic towards weaker students who get more focus while brighter students are being limited.

I totally agree with this. I don't view myself as particularly smart but I did feel that my teachers had a view that "she'll be grand" and the teacher's focus had to be on ensuring that the weaker students passed.