Applying Mastery in a Multi-age Classroom
This page contains the final report of a small-scale action research project which explored teaching for mastery in mixed-age classes, focussing on how to teach so that children move through the programmes of study for their year group at ‘broadly the same pace’, a crucial issue when focussing on ‘closing the gap’.
The report includes a number of case studies and links to video clips of teachers talking about these case studies can be found below. The clips focus both on adapting the lesson structure to allow a focus on age-related expectations in a mixed-age class and elements of mastery (or quality first teaching) which proved to be significant during the project.
Structuring the lesson:
Keeping the class together where possible: a flexible approach:
- High View 2
- Newton Ferrers 1 and Newton Ferrers 2
- East-the-Water
- Beaford 2 – includes changing the lesson structure to two shorter maths sessions each day sandwiched around morning break
- Beaford 3 – impact of restructuring on teachers and children
Providing separate teaching for individual year groups:
- Halberton
- Holywell 1
- West Down
- Brampford Speke 1 – includes meeting the needs of three age groups
Quality First Teaching
- Elicitation tasks – High View 1
- Pre-teaching – High View 1, Holywell 2
- Rapid support and intervention – High View 1, Beaford 2
- Questioning – High View 2
- Models and images – Beaford 1
- Rich tasks – Dartington 1 and Dartington 2
- Feedback and marking – Brampford Speke 2
