I'm surprised that it's only four kids that were moved to that class.  I hope they are a well-suited group that can band together.

I was also in a grade 1-2 split when I was in grade 1.  It was good for me because, though I hadn't been tested gifted yet, it meant that I could learn both the grade 1 and grade 2 material.  It was NOT GOOD for the grade 1s who were easily distracted because their own work often suffered because they were trying to pay attention to too much or couldn't filter what was for them and what wasn't.

I think that if Hannah's a smart kid who can differentiate between her work and the material for the upper grades - she'll do great.

Hi there.

Both of my able-bodied boys have spent time in split classes.  My youngest was in a 3-4 split both last year and this year (gr. 3 last year, 4 this year).  My understanding from teacher friends is that kids in splits have been assigned to a split grade because they are more able to work independently and rarely, if ever, present as a behavioural problem.  My friend actually admits she prefers splits because the kids tend to be more able to work on their own and she has fewer, if any, challenging students.  Splits are very common in our area.  For grade three this year there are three grade three splits with no straight grade three class.  Of the three grade four, two are splits and one is a straight grade four.  At our school a straight grade is the exception rather than the norm. It is, of course, a numbers game.

On whole I do believe my kids have had fairly positive experiences in splits.  I believe a great deal of whether it wll be successful or not depends on the strength of the teacher.  My son's grade 3/4 teacher this year is phenomenal (all of my boys have had her, including specialson./Matthew) and I feel very confident that David will have a good year with her.

The one year where I do feel a split was less than positive was when my eldest was, like Hannah, was in a disproportionate split.  He was among five grade threes in a 2/3 split.  It seemed largely like a grade two class with a bunch of grade threes on their own.  The school told me that this particular bunch of grade threes was congregated in such a way because they were very bright and they would be assigned enriched work (there was a straight grade three class as well).  It is true that all of the five kids were participants in our school board's withdrawal enrichment program for "gifted learners". However, I didn't see a lot of enrichment on a day-to-day basis, only a lot of these five kids left on their own.  I volunteered in the classroom twice a week so I saw a fair bit of what was going on.  It was less than ideal.  As a result,  when Robert was assigned to a 5/6 split which had a similar ratio and he was a grade six I approached the school and had him reassigned to a straight grade six.  I wasn't about to risk a repeat experience.

My gut reaction is that if Hannah is in grade one and has been assigned to a grade 1/2 split with few grade 1's it speaks to the fact that school likely views her as a strong, independent and capable learner.  The only concern is from a social standpoint.  Does she have a friend in the class.  Will the four grade one's work well together.  Is she confortable socializing with older kids?

 My eldest daughter was in a grade 3-4 split. She did very well (in grade 3) and tackled alot of the grade 4 stuff with relish, finding the grade 3 stuff too easy. Apparently she will be in the same class again this year, only as a grade 4 student. Hope she doesn't get too bored.

Our family experience was similar to what DaisyJane has posted.  In our area, no class arrangements are considered "final" until "Reorganization Day" - which is usually about 2 weeks or so into it - enrolment numbers are stabilized by then & sometimes the school gains or loses a teacher depending on overall numbers - hence the reorganizing.   In our small school at least, I know quite a bit of time & energy went into figuring out which kids to place together - or to break up in some cases!   Hopefully Hannah will do well ... (love that name BTW).

I don't know of a tastier way to tackle anything than with relish.

My youngest has been put into a split that puts her all the bad readers and 2 discipline problems  of her grade into the grade below.  It is a horrid split.  the saving grace is that one of the more genius teachers to be at that school is going to be working with my daughter's dunce hat dummy detention hall group 2 days a week.  It really will not be enough, though to either help the perfectionist prima donna who  dreamed up this class or my kid who was just born with mild dyslexia, not the insane society class war. 

My son is in a 5/6 (on the 6 side this year, but was in the 5 side last year) split, but it's a gifted program (he was assigned to it based on various psychological tests) so the teacher tends to teach to the whole class at above the higher grade's level at least some of the time. The kids are all fairly strong, independent learners, too, which helps. He also spent time in a 3/4 split that was less successful but I think it was the teacher more than the split that was an issue.

Mendalla

I was in a split class from grade 2 to grade 5.  I did not like it.

I was always on the younger side of the split.  I was fine academically -- I managed well with the older grade's stuff.  (We overlapped for things like science and part of language arts, but stayed separate for things like math and the rest of language arts.)  But I did not like the class.

We were in a disproportionate split.  There were five to eight of us younger kids (I think we started out as five and picked up a few more over the years), and the rest was the older class.  I seem to remember this being the only split class in the school, so it's possible that the school wasn't quite experienced in how to handle it.

Being one of the more academically advanced of my group of 5-8 students, I sort of stuck out from them and didn't mix well.  Some of them weren't the greatest kids to be around anyway.  But, also because of this, I attracted negative attention from a lot of the older side of the class.  I wasn't "bullied" but I was certainly picked on through most of elementary school.

I believe that it's because of my split class that I grew up with very few friends.  I've always been quiet and independent, but I feel I would have made more friends in elementary school if I had been in a regular classroom.  Unfortunately, I got used to be independent and relying on few friends, so that meant I made few friends in middle/high school, and few friends in early university.  Over the past five or six years, I've been working hard to build friendships with people I meet, since I really didn't do much of it in school.  (Out of fourteen years of school -- if you count nursery and kindergarten -- and five years of university -- I really only have three friends from that extensive time period.  And only one of them do I actually see more than three times a year.)

So... to sum up... I found that a split class was interesting academically-speaking, but I found it to be a negative influence socially-speaking.  That's not to say that all classes are like that and all students will have that experience -- perhaps I just had a "bad" set of classmates?  Perhaps a teacher more experience with split classes would have done more to encourage socialization with students in my own grade (like doing activities with the other classes of the same grade)?  Perhaps the school should have mixed it up a bit and rotated which students got placed in the split class rather than always making it the same small group?

I dunno... it was a mixed bag, I think...  Good and bad.

Another term for split class is "combined grade". My kids have been in them and they can work well.

My grade one experience in Ontario was in a combined 1-8 class. Yes that's not a typo. It was the last year of the one room 8 grades schoolhouse. School came easy to me -it wasn't a problem.

 I was in split grades, I think it was like this:

Grade 3: 3/4

Grade 4: 3/4

Grade 5: 5/6

I didn't mind the split grades.  In grade 4, I was in a special program so I didn't get bored (was also in it 5&6, but to a lesser extent).  My mom actually volunteered a lot for the program in grade 4.

I really appreciated the grade 5 split, there were very few girls in my grade in that class.  We had an open school though, so some classes were mixed up based on pre-tests for units, or for special activities where we were all together and all the 5s & 6s were together.  I had some problems on and off with some of the girls in my grade that year (it was the start of when girls get catty) but I got along with some of the grade 6 guys who made it much more tolerable  (I was also friends with grade 5 guys and grade 6 girls).  Being friends with the older guys was easier though, because there wasn't the whole issue of oh, you must have a crush on him because generally that only occurred within the same grade.

The one thing I didn't like about split grades (3/4).  Our school was separated into division, div 1: ECS & 1-3; div 2: 4-6.  We were supposed to stay on our respective sides at recess and lunch.  So the grade 3&4s had classes together but weren't supposed to see each other at lunch and recess.

If your daughter is doing fine academically and socially it shouldn't be a problem.  Starting out, if she doesn't know the alphabet yet, can't add simple numbers, etc then I would see if she could be switched into the grade 1 only class.  Otherwise, give it a month and see and if there's a problem I would hope that the school would be supportive.

 Sorry, a long day and I'm a bit rambly.

I wanted to add one more thing, my school had a learning disability program where kids from all over the city (not necessarily in the designated areas) were bused to my school.  I think being around kids in different grades with different aptitudes was a great experience.  In my 5/6 split (grade 5) for math the kids in grade 5 who did well were usually in a class with grade 6s who struggled (as determined each unit by a pre-test).  In this class, usually the grade 5&6s were paired up on occasion, with the expectation that the grade 6's would help out the grade 5s which in turn would also help them learn the material better.  I was often paired up with a grade 6 who was struggling a lot (not LD program though) so I could help them which really helped me understand the material at a deeper level as well as teaching me tutoring skills.  My elementary school was old, so wasn't given much money, the kids in my neighbourhood a few years younger than me went to a brand new school with all the bells and whistles.  I wouldn't trade the way I had it, I got a lot out of the way my old school was structure with a large diversity of kids.

Thank you all for the input. When the school decided rather late on split grades (because of unexpectedly high enrolments and class size limits - in addition to my daughter's 1/2 class there's a JK/SK class, a 2/3 class and a 3/4 class) the teachers were apparently given the opportunity to choose which younger students would be brought "up" on the basis of their maturity, abilities, etc. We have one advantage in that the Grade 1/2 teacher was also Hannah's JK teacher a couple of years ago, so she knew the children pretty well and had a good idea of who would be best able to handle the split class. I'm a little concerned that our school as far as I know hasn't had split grades so I'm not sure how much experience the teachers will have with them (some may have had the experience in other schools.)

Anyway, after a bit of upset in the morning when she found out, Hannah seemed quite happy with her new class by the time she came home and told us that "some of the Grade 2s even talked to me." We'll hope it goes well.

Some schools prefer to split all the classes.  That way the teachers keep the same kids for two years and just keep adding the new younger kids.

I would just be conscious of her being one of the younger kids and ask them about wwhat opportunities there will be for her to paly with a make friends her own age.

I attended a one room school with grades 1 to 8.  (Yes, I'm THAT old).  By the time we got to the next grade, we'd already heard the material before and we learned how to work independently.  By the end of grade one, I was reading at above a grade eight level.  I found it beneficial to be in a multi-grade setting. 

I taught an 8/9 split.  To be honest I level all of the students throughout the year so there were groups of just grade 9s just grade 8s grade 8s and 9s.  For content at our school we do what is called an A-B.  year one we teacher half of one grade and half of the other grade.  The second year we flip it so that the content is new each year.

Peace

Joel

Having attended school with Grades 1 to 6 in one room and Grades 7 to 11 in the other, I got used to split classes when at an early age.  So I wasn't upset when my son entered Grade 2 and I discovered that he was one of about eight Grade 2s in a split 2-3 class.  With a December birthday, he was by far the youngest in the classroom, 23 months younger than my friend's son in Grade 3.  Academically he did fine - he already read at a grade 5 level (which annoyed his teacher).  But it wasn'[t good for him socially.  The teacher made no allowance for age differences in her classroom.  She told me once that he acted immature.  I wondered what level of maturity she expected from a six year old in with children who were almost 8.

I think a lot depends upon the teacher.  Good teachers can probably stimulate the children from the younger grade to try working with the older grade, while at the same time making sure that the older children have interesting challanging work.   I think the best combination would probably be the top students from the younger class in with the lower students from the older class.   Or to have a fairly small class of advanced students from both classes working on an enriched program with each student encouraged to work at his level.  It doesn't make sense to me to put four or five top Grade 3s in with the Grade 2 class.

My youngest's split grade works on the assumption that kids with learning difficulties are as immature as kids a year younger. They are incorrect, of course but I can guarentee that the last thing they expect this group to be are role models.  they just expect them to be retards.  this is because of the teacher who devised this plan.

In my eldest's split grade, there was no such genius at work.  It is just a split grade of a lead year and 2nd lead FI class in order to make up a class of 22.  The class gets along o.k. and there are kids there of a variety of learning initiatives.

My older kids have been in split classes for years with no problems.  My son is currently in a 6/7 split.  However it does depend on the child.  I have insisted that my youngest (who is ADHD) NOT be in a split and the school has agreed that it would not be in her best interest because of her attention/focus issues.  Otherwise I have not had a problem with them...cms