I work on a team with three teachers, myself included, and recently we decided to try teaching 4th grade through a single subject model. The transition from traditional classrooms has been rocky, change is never easy, but soon I feel we will have a macro tool that will help us produce high scores. Multiple subject teaching has different tools from single and this one would combine them.
The single subject teaching model is kind of like high school: the kids travel three times to all three teachers. It amounts to about 2 hours ELA, 2 math, and 2 writing. This takes away the “mother hen” syndrome of each teacher feeling like their class is a set of “their kids” and replaces it with an “our” mentality. Every child’s math performance becomes the responsibility of the math teacher. Every kid’s ELA performance falls on the ELA teacher and so on. It is good for the kids because each teacher becomes a true specialist in the subject area taught at the elementary school and they benefit from that.
The single subject teaching model will be nice for me as a teacher because I will plan and teach the same lesson three times in a day. As an elementary school teacher, that is usually a foreign concept. I feel this is an excellent intervention tool for behavior as well because the kids are moving every 2 hours. As I have shared in previous posts, this is probably the most difficult group for me in a long time. I’m not sure what was in the water these kids have been drinking. I hope the single subject model will help us foster test score improvement in these kids. Have you taught in a single subject teaching model? Did you like it? Why or why not?
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I teach 5th grade and I am part of a four teacher team. This is our second year rotating. I teach two subjects Lang. arts and Social Studies. Each subject is taught twice a day. This will be my fifth year teaching fifth grade and we have seen improved test scores and our behavior problems are almost not existant. We still have motivation issues, and some students who are still struggling with organizational skills, but those too are improving. My team just loves our rotations. We have even had our fourth grade follow our model and start rotations this year. They love it also. Our only problem has been one parent who does not think this is good for her son and has taken it to our school board. We are in the process of gathering research that will back up our own observations and results.If you have any information that can help us out we would greatly appreciate it.
Thank You,
Karen
@Karen: I’ll look for some literature on that. It sounds like your test scores and influence on the 4th grade team are evidence of its effectiveness. Our parent teacher conferences are next week so I may hear it from a few parents. Lucky for us, we were the top 4th grade in the district last year so that seems to win us some more trust than usual. Good luck getting through to that parent. Sometimes you just have to do what you know is right and let the chips fall where they may.