People's attitudes towards intellectual ability

[Holdfast]

Actually, I realize I left out a vital bit of information that might change how you would perceive the results of the lesson I described, and that is that the lesson was taught in a Team Teaching class, and an exceptionally well-run class at that, with two teachers, a student teacher (me), and a paraprofessional. With 4 adults in the classroom, every child received adequate attention.

That makes a huge difference!

I can clearly see how that model would then naturally lead to extremely high performance of the class as a whole.

Might I be terribly imp-ish for a moment though, and play Devil's Advocate?

Isn't using 4 professionals to work with a large class, enabling different groups within that class to work at different rates by giving each group dedicated teacher time, essentially applying the principle of sets/streams to that class?

Instead of the sets/streams being taught in different physical classrooms, you're applying exactly the same principle to looser subdivisions within a single classroom.

It IS a less resource-intensive way of using streams, though, since in your example it required only 2 full teachers, one student, and one teaching assisstant (rather than the 4 full teachers that sets would require), so from the perspective of maximising efficiency with limited public resources, I can certainly see a real benefit to this model.

I appreciate the discussion very much!

As do I.

 

[Jadzia]

When we were talking about sets yesterday, I was talking about secondary schools (ages 11-16). I used to enjoy the change of scene (and company) that came with moving between classes every hour for different subjects, and the end of the hour was something to look forward too

When I was in junior school (ages 7-11), we still had sets for some subjects but it was rather different. For music lessons, we moved rooms and mixed with our neighbouring classes, grouping the most able musicians together with the most musically talented teacher. But for other subjects (only those which allowed discussion) it was typically our own classroom and teacher, but moving to different tables.

IIRC there were 6 tables per classroom for 4/6 children each. I remember for our maths lessons, we would move to a different table than normal, which were supposedly correlated with our abilities: Table one... table six.

Occasionally, we'd have multiple activities going on, and the room would be split into two halves, one for painting and the other half for sewing, or whatever. So we had to move to different tables for that as well.

We rarely had a teaching assistant because they weren't the norm in the 1990s. But when we did I never found them helpful because they'd come at subjects from a completely different angle than our usual teacher taught us, which is something that's probably been improved since.

I also remember one of my junior school teachers brought her teenage daughter in some days (misaligned school holidays), and she would help out in the classroom, which I thought was nice.

 

[Captain Shaw]

We had set classes for Maths but the trouble was the Maths teacher for the bottom group would not teach she used to sit and talk to the girls at the front of the class about make up ect.
Me and my friends used to time her to see how long it took her to start the hour lesson, it could take her between 15 to 45 minutes to start anything then she used to send someone out to get the teaches cakes for their breaks.
I just don't understand why they did not just send us home it would have been cheaper than sitting in class.

 

[RJDiogenes]

It IS a less resource-intensive way of using streams, though, since in your example it required only 2 full teachers, one student, and one teaching assisstant (rather than the 4 full teachers that sets would require), so from the perspective of maximising efficiency with limited public resources, I can certainly see a real benefit to this model.

It also doesn't completely segregate the students, which is also important.

 

[Thespeckledkiwi]

The funny thing is; I have a very high IQ (I am a very logical, which makes me very cold sometimes) but I have absolutely no common sense. You tell me not to stick something into a light socket? By God I'm going to stick something into a light socket to figure out why not? I suck on pennies when I get nervous (I clean them off mind you, most of the time). I do things normal humans usually don't because yes, I am bat shit insane. I take that back, I am more than bat shit insane...I drove my sanity off the cliff and all that is left is insanity.

Which is why I have such a high IQ is because I approach things from a different view point and I am very meticulous in my approach. I can run through variables and arrive at a different conclusion each time. It makes it very hard to keep up with me because my brain is working faster than either my typing or my voice, so by the time I am at point C in my mind, my voice is trying to figure out what the hell to say at point A to make it sound reasonable. Same when I type, which is why this is a such a clusterfuck of a post.

Because of this, most people think I am a dumbass or...very...slow. I am not. I just don't have common sense. And I'm proud of that.

I have heard this quite a few times that Some people with high IQ s have trouble with common sense.
Someone i use to work with her step brother was a member of mensa yet he could not button up his own shirt.

I just tend to ignore that little thing that says; this is bad because of XXX...

 

[thestrangequark]

Might I be terribly imp-ish for a moment though, and play Devil's Advocate?

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Isn't using 4 professionals to work with a large class, enabling different groups within that class to work at different rates by giving each group dedicated teacher time, essentially applying the principle of sets/streams to that class?

Yes and no. It's a way to take the best of what sets have to offer while eliminating the negative aspects. The good being instruction that is suited to children's different needs and capabilities, and the bad...

It IS a less resource-intensive way of using streams, though, since in your example it required only 2 full teachers, one student, and one teaching assisstant (rather than the 4 full teachers that sets would require), so from the perspective of maximising efficiency with limited public resources, I can certainly see a real benefit to this model.

It also doesn't completely segregate the students, which is also important.

This is the biggie. Segregation is the first step toward inequity in education. It also makes it much more difficult for children to change sets as their abilities change and grow, and to deal with kids who don't fit well into any particular set, i.e., children who perform very well in some areas but poorly in others. Kids in the class I described had the freedom to move between the sets as they improved or when they needed more time or intensive instruction. On the other hand, kids in traditional sets often test into one and are then stuck there for the rest of their academic lives, whether or not that set remains appropriate to the child's ability.

 

[Purdy Bear]

Thestrangequark: I was one of those kids that was actually allowed to move sets. I moved up four classes, but they wouldnt allow me to go into the set which echoed my intelligence because I had lost the first three years of secondary education and thus couldnt catch up with the others. This stopped me doing a language, an individual sciences, as well as mathematics (I did Arithmatic).

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One thing I feel would also help most children, is if someone, not necessarily a teacher, taught them how to remember things. We never had the memory masters, and note taking formulas when I was a child. As far as I remember, we never had an actual lesson on how to remember things. Not a single one. We were just sent off at night will loads of stuff to learn.

One of my teachers even gave us dictational essays to write down. We had one night to learn these, word for word and when we missed out a single word or mispelled it, he would doc us points.

I was also a member of the school choir, we were never told how to memories the lyrics, we were just expected to.

Under this vain, this past Christmas, I gave my 12 year old Neice/God Daughter, a book on memory mastering and brainstorming. However, her school has failed its Ofsted visit and is already on special measures. This is the second school I know of within a 6 mile radius of me.

Since academic qualifications seem the only thing people seem to recognise as intelligence (you've seen my view on that earlier), I guess we have to join them instead of beating them, and get the exams and good results under our belts.

Its also very obvious that those in the certain professions only recognise the view of others in their professions and anyone else is just blowing air.

 

[Scout101]

How would you teach that, though? It's different for everyone. The way I memorize things might not help YOU any, and vice versa.

 

[Purdy Bear]

There are numerous ways to memorise that I have found on the internet. The best way is to try something out and then work on it. Unless the everyone has the information available how will they know!

Heres just a few:

Room Journeys (Roman Room method) trips, anacronyms, rhymes, rythems, brainstorming, maps, pictures, index cards, using coloured text, listening to tapes, parrot fashion and so on.

One would have to see what sort of personality you were - ie Visual, logical, tactile etc and then work from there. Im a Visual so I can remember everything I see and hear.

There are also various lecture note taking methods to help students which were never mentioned to me when I was at College.

It seems a lot of information is out there to help the student but little is getting through to them.

Being totally logical, I think it would extremely easy to teach. I personally would take five minutes out of the lesson to talk about one method, then trial it for a week or so, to see which kids it worked with. Being creative in teaching methods would also help. Instead of using just books, computers, and chalk boards I would use diagrams, brainstorming charts, illustrations and songs to help them learn. I know this may make more initial work for the teacher/assistant but once done it could be easily repeated.

This is where the mulitple inteligence tests (Howard Gardener) are so informative. If you know what your childs intelligence is, then you can cater for that childrens learning style.