Teaching and Learning in Large Classes: 10 Action Principles
Post submitted by Whole Child Blogger Tymeesa Rutledge
A small group of dedicated teachers and professionals gathered at ASCD's Annual Conference to hear Greg Rouault speak about principles for teaching large classes. Rouault, a professor at Konan University, Hirao School of Management in western Japan, was honest about teaching large classes: "There isn't going to be an answer at the end."
Rouault acknowledged that teaching large classes can be challenging. He emphasized that teachers should look past physical constraints of the classroom, focusing instead on getting students to learn despite the size of a class.
"Take on the challenge and focus on what you can change instead of what you can't," said Rouault to the small group of educators.
Some of the challenges of having a large class are no secret. Teachers may seem like they have less control, more paperwork, and more problems motivating or activating students.
Rouault asked of the audience, "What is the optimum class size? What is the difference between a class of 40 students and 20 students?"
One audience member responded by saying, "Grading papers."
Rouault agreed with the participant, but he emphasized that the teacher's instruction shouldn't be different. Rouault believes that some teachers have a "fixed mindset versus a growth mindset."
There are advantages to teaching large classes. Those advantages are that there is an opportunity for collaboration and groupthink among students, a rich variety of human resources, and teachers are not the only model.
One participant, an educator from Lawton, Okla., found the session helpful for her district. Jean Hastings shared that her district will be losing two elementary schools this upcoming school year, which will cause teachers in other schools to gain more students.
"I think it's very pertinent to the situation that many of us are finding ourselves in, and challenges, not to lose sight of our real job—to educate," said Hastings.
10 Action Principles
- Variety: What can we vary?
- Pace: Why are pace and tempo important?
- Interest: What makes an activity interesting?
- Individualization: How can we address students as individuals?
- Collaboration: What are the challenges that we face with collaboration?
- Personalization: What is different between personalization and individualization?
- Choice or open-endedness: In which areas should we provide choice?
- Routine: How can routines help us and which ones do you use?
- Involvement or "enlarging the circle": What does this mean?
- Question our Qs: How can the questions we ask do a disservice to our students?
Activity Resource Book: Teaching Large Multilevel Classes by Natalie Hess, Cambridge University Press.
Comments (2)
Romualdas Stanenas
April 30, 2011
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The future will be CBT and online learning with enhanced multimedia platforms and game simulations for pre and post assessments. This will be the main way to teach large volumes of students handling grading and pre work.
Gaming companies and online education companies will merge to address these issues and lower costs along with enhance learning.
Marcia Young
May 1, 2011
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As a middle school teacher of both self contained(not ED) special needs kids and classes of 30+ general education kids, I can tell you he is 100% correct. In my 30+ classes the group think is so rich, there is always a kid who is willing to demonstrate for the class using a different lens than I used. There is always someone or a few kids who will rephrase my question so that others will get it, my work then becomes smarter not harder. I can coach and facilitate during my meandering through the groups. When i have only 8-10 students, very rarely does this lend itself to group, it seems everyone hangs on to my every word even though when I lean in to listen to their explanations or interpretations they are beyond my expectations. This is the main reason in my school we push so hard for Inclusive classrooms, we see how all kids excell when they are among peers and are able to work in groups away from the chalk and talk of teachers.