STREAMED ABILITY CLASSES

In the second term of my first year at the Middle school, the curriculum made a one hundred and eighty degree change by implementing streamed ability classes. I now had the year two and year one students divided into high, medium, and low ability classes. At first I expected this to make a huge difference in how I was supposed to design lesson material. I thought the high classes would be so far ahead of the low classes the low classes would never catch up. I also thought I would be doing a lot of extra work preparing more lessons for the higher classes.

As things progressed I found I could use the same lesson plans for all the classses, the only difference being that the high classes could digest the material better than the lower classes. I usually had no classroom management problems with the higher classes who were generally more serious about studying English. This was not always the case. I did have some lower and medium classes of well-behaved, sincere students and a class or two of unruly, hard to manage high ability students. As usual, I thought it all depended on how much I was willing to give to the lesson.

I know when I was in high school we really enjoyed streamed ability classes because our best friends were at our own level, and the class was brighter and more interesting. It’s the same with these students. The higher classes are more enjoyable to teach, especially if the Korean teacher comes to the class and some spontaneous team teaching takes place. On the other hand, there is usually one low ability class of students who have absolutely no interest or ability in English and these classes are often extremely difficult for me to manage. In this case, I try my best to concentrate only on the students who have retained an interest in learning and to do my utmost to ignore the rest, who are totally ignoring me at the same time.