5 Strategies For Teaching Split Grades Effectively
Teaching split grades is just part of the job. As much as we’d all love to have single grade classrooms where all our students were at the same level, that’s just not realistic. I think splits have their pros and cons just as straight grades do.
In my school, straights are RARE! I taught a straight K my first year and for 2022-2023 I had a straight 3 but it’s doubtful that it’ll happen again. My first year that I had a 2/3 was challenging. I had moved up from K and I had to learn how to teach two grades at once. Oh, and that was the 2019-2020 year so that darn virus hit and we had to teach online.
Listen, I look back at that year and think “wow…that was a bit of a gongshow. I am so much better at teaching these grades now!”. I mean, duh of course…it was a rollercoaster of a year and with more experience, I feel way more confident in it.
So, if you teach K/1, or 1/2 or 2/3 or 4/5…we’re with you. A split is a split.
PROS: Let’s look at some of the pros of a split grade
Your younger group tends to be more independent (not always, and not every student, but generally)
Differentiation happens naturally
There is plenty of opportunity for your older group to be leaders and students support each other
Your younger ones are exposed to things earlier. For example, I always taught fractions and division to my 2s even though it wasn’t in their math curriculum. We just did an introduction and I didn’t assess them.
If you have any say in your class placement, you have the ability to keep students a second year
CONS: Okay, yes…there are cons
You have twice as much to cover and may have to teach separate lessons
Every split offers it’s own challenge. K/1 split is difficult as some have had a year of school, while others haven’t. A 2/3 French split is challenging because the 3s start ELA but the 2s don’t (at least in my district).
Parents aren’t always happy about it
So, what can we do about it? You’re given your grade and looks like you have a split this year. Don’t panic if you’ve never taught one before, there’ll be lots of trial and error and that’s normal.
Combine, combine, combine
You know you’re teaching a split…now what? How the heck do you plan for that? Well my biggest tip is to combine everything that you possibly can. Get out both curricula and see what lines up. I find it’s easiest to blend science and socials topics. Math may be a little more challenging to combine but remember that we can all be learning about addition, we just do different work (more below).
I am not required to make year plans but I still like to do it so that I have a guide. GUIDE! It’s just a guide! Every group is different and your timeline will change every year because of so many factors that you have no control over. Even if you can’t predict 2 months down the road, you can have an idea of where you’re going with it and the order in which you want to cover topics.
Remember that you WILL NOT cover everything! Even if you have a straight grade, you will not. There is no curriculum police. Think about what’s most important and what they will need to move onto their next grade and allow yourself to let go of things. Don’t forget that some of those outcomes are quite small and can be covered without doing explicit lessons, they can just piggy back on others. I am fortunate that I don’t live somewhere that is super prescriptive so if you have standards that you MUST hit, this may be a bit different.
Differentiate by ability, not grade
Now, this doesn’t always happen but often you’ll end up with stronger younger students and older students who need more support. Of course, you will have outliers but try to think about your class like a continuum of ability and not separated by grade.
Instead of grouping by grade 2s or grade 3s, I often group with colours, letters, even animals. So the green group, the bear group, group B etc.
Build independence
This will depend on your grade, of course, but I aim to foster as much independence as possible. I achieve this through a few things:
Structured routines so students know what to expect
Keeping an organized classroom space (things are easy to find)
Develop and teach systems to my students
Use answer keys for them to mark their own work (ideal for older students)
Change the expectation, not the activity
You don’t need two completely different activities for both grades. In writing, for example, you are all doing story workshop, or we’re all working on a writing project about a silly animal. You don’t need to have each grade do a different writing task, but you can adjust your expectations, or give more scaffolding to one group. I obviously expect my grade 3s to write more and with more advanced conventions and spelling than the 2s. Same writing activity, different expectation.
Same lesson, different work
Teach your lessons together and bring your lower grade along for the ride with your higher grade students. I often introduce concepts to my lower end that aren’t actually in the curriculum. This tends to happen mostly in math. For example, I teach multiplication to my grade 2 students, but it’s not in their math curriculum. Their work is different than the grade 3s in this instance and would be a bit more basic. More often than not, they’re excited to do the “harder” stuff and join their upper grade classmates. I just don’t evaluate them on it. The same thing happens with grammar concepts. I introduce it to them during the lesson and I may have differentiated work based on the grade. Alternatively, I give them more guidance or support with it.
So, I teach everyone the lesson, we do group activities together but when it comes to independent work, we break off and change the work.
If the outcome is something you are supposed to be teaching both grades, say addition, and you’re playing a game, you can just have different rules for the game. If we’re using cards to make addition questions, I would say that grade 2s need to make 2-digit numbers and grade 3s need to make 3-digit numbers. Of course, grade 2s are always allowed to challenge themselves but they don’t have to.
Bonus: Dealing with concerned parents
Not every parent will be happy about their child being placed in a split class. At my school we have a couple straight classes, but otherwise it’s ALL splits so they’ll end up in one pretty frequently. The problem is, sometimes they don’t like that they are the older in a split.
If you have say in where you place students, you are probably in a place to be able to speak with that parent about your own decisions about it. If you have no say in your class, you may have to direct these questions to admin or whoever made the calls.
As someone who does place students in their classes for next year, we spend so much time on it, it’s wild. That’s something that we all remind parents of. We don’t just put them willy-nilly wherever. It’s a big puzzle and we do our best. Consider teaching style, learning style, peer relationships, birthday (if they’re a late birthday that may be a factor in their socialization), social issues that require separation, parent-requests (they are allowed to do that in a formal letter at our school) and even things like letting an academically strong grade 3 have a chance to be in a leadership position with their grade 2 peers. Or, maybe they are strong academically but they are young socially or need more SEL support or we want to give them the opportunity to come out of their shell.
I’ve only had one instance where my choice to put a student as the upper in a split went badly and the parents took action against it. Otherwise, if they have a concern, they might bring it up to you as the sending or receiving teacher and I’ve found that as long as you have some reasons to back it up, they’re usually pretty understanding once they get the reasoning.