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Columns::October 22, 2001
Partnering up
Centenarian study gets $7.5 million from aging institute
Crossing the boundaries of knowledge
Lilly, Senior Teaching Fellows announced
Regents announce three finalists for chancellor’s position
Home away from home
Campus Closeup
Kudos
Retirees
Noche Latina
Campus News
Small groups, big results
By Michael Childs
mchilds@coe.uga.edu
If all students learned the same subjects, the same way, at the same pace, teaching them would be a snap.
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| First-grade teacher Ann Mauldin (above) implemented the small-group instruction approach in her Fowler Drive Elementary classroom last year. Photo by Wingate Downs |
But as any teacher--or parent--can tell you, kids don’t come with uniform, one-size-fits-all abilities. Neither should their classroom instruction, says Joseph Wisenbaker, an associate professor of educational psychology and director of UGA’s Academic Computing Center.
That’s why Wisenbaker praises an innovative program, known as “Flexible Small-Group Instruction,” that dramatically increases the effectiveness of classroom teaching. Wisenbaker minces no words when he discusses its potential.
“This is the one approach to teaching I’ve seen over the past 30 years that clearly enhances students’ educational outcomes in profound ways,” says Wisenbaker. “The effects of the program on standardized test performance were nearly as large as an extra year of instruction for every year taught.”
The approach was developed four years ago by two Gwinnett County elementary teachers with a Georgia Department of Education grant. Wisenbaker, who served as evaluator of that pilot project, observed the dramatic rise in student achievement.
“I kept trying to put into perspective, just how effective this approach was,” Wisenbaker says. “I became convinced that if it were implemented in grades one through five statewide, it would make Georgia’s students among the very best in the entire nation.”
The Gwinnett teachers worked in teams of three, with extensive testing to determine each student’s developing needs. Based on test results, students rotated through a series of small-group modules directed by teachers, paraprofessionals and parents trained as volunteers.
This collaborative model keeps students focused on areas in which they need to invest their energies, avoids exposing them to tasks for which they are unprepared and frees them from unproductive repetition on tasks they have already mastered. The shared instructional responsibilities let teachers individualize each student’s education. Thus, the program increases learning for students at all levels of achievement.
“Take almost any third-grade classroom and look at students’ reading levels,” Wisenbaker says. “While the average for the class may be nearly on grade level, there are likely to be some students who are reading several grade levels beyond their
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| Kristen Hunt, a junior in early childhood education, works with two Fowler Drive first-graders on their reading. Photo by Wingate Downs |
peers and others several grade levels behind.”
But while the successful pilot project in Gwinnett drew upon a large base of parent volunteers in suburban Atlanta, implementation in Clarke County faced a different environment. The program was implemented this past year by four Clarke County first-grade teachers at Fowler Drive Elementary.
Fowler Drive, where 91 percent of the students qualify for reduced or free lunches and almost 25 percent are Hispanic, draws from a population with few parents available to volunteer. The teachers had to look elsewhere to find sufficient adult resources for small-group instruction.
Help arrived in the form of more than 200 UGA early childhood education and educational psychology students, who served as volunteers in small-group instruction last year while fulfilling degree requirements for internships and classroom experience.
The results at Fowler Drive were stunning. Student gains on standardized testing were 130 to 150 percent greater than would otherwise have been expected.
More importantly, benefits from the program were shared equally by students--both high achievers and low performers.
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| Joseph Wisenbaker |
The program was so successful at Fowler Drive that the school’s second-grade teachers are also using the approach in their classes this fall.
The teaching approach has now shown solid results in raising student achievement at two very different elementary schools, and Wisenbaker believes it deserves consideration for statewide application. At the very least, it merits a wider study, he says.
“The program allows schools to deliver effective instruction using a 6-to-1 student-teacher ratio--without hiring another teacher or building an extra classroom,” says Wisenbaker. “Were the program expanded statewide, it could reach every elementary school in Georgia for about 10 percent more than is currently spent.
“If the money becomes available, we’re going to be on a clear path to revolutionize what happens in our public schools,” he also says. |
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