There are many benefits to a combination classroom.
Concerns of combination classrooms
- Combination classrooms encourage a learning environment that centers around critical thinking skills, a main characteristic of Common Core.
- With diverse ages and grades, diverse learning opportunities arise that better exemplify our real working world.
- Students are presented with learning opportunities that encourage their level of learning. For example, lower grade students who are high scoring students have opportunities to develop their critical thinking skills with expanded curriculum. Also, students in higher grades who are underperforming still have opportunities to be a leader in the classroom.
- Students are surrounded by leadership opportunities daily. Older students helping younger students, higher scoring students helping lower scoring students. In combination classrooms, learning these leadership skills is just as imperative as learning classroom routines and expectations.
- Students are in a position to simultaneously learn leadership skills, self control, positive peer to peer relationships, and individual responsibility as well as responsibility for their role within our learning community.
- Combination classrooms do little to encourage "who is smart and who isn’t" within the classroom. Students naturally grow and learn at different rates. If a student is learning slightly slower than another child in a single grade classroom, that student is often internalizing that they are not smart, or not the best in the class. With multi-age learning, self-esteem issues are diminished.
- Students are taught how to be good citizens and good samaritans as they are learning reading, writing and mathematics skills.
- Often, whole grade instruction is equivalent to small group instruction as there are less students in a grade. There is more one on one time with the teacher and the student. For example, teaching math to twenty third graders looks very different that math being taught to twelve third graders. There is less of a chance that students will "get left behind” or “fall through the cracks”.
Concerns of combination classrooms
- Students lose their grade level identity.
- Lower grade students will be bored next year because they have been exposed to the curriculum.
- Students have less opportunity to develop peer to peer relationships.
- Not all of the curriculum will be taught because there is not enough time.