Small Class Sizes

On the one hand, no school can afford a one-on-one teacher-student ratio. It is financially unworkable. But at the same time a school can approximate the ideal by having fewer students in the classroom. Our experience suggests 13 to 15 students works.  

This low student-teacher ratio is important because teachers need to be keenly aware of each child’s progress – daily if possible. They need to find the sweet spot of a child’s learning. What is the appropriate content? What is optimum pacing? What is the instructional level that keeps the child engaged and progressing? 

Designed for Growth
This ideal instructional level is designed for growth. If a teacher can identify this level through assessments, he or she will create a learning path for children in which they develop competencies and enjoy learning. The appropriate instructional level is neither too easy whereby children become bored and uninterested. Nor is it too difficult, leading to student frustration and aversion to learning. 

Therefore, classes must be small. The arrangement gives teachers more opportunity to make timely assessments of student progress. The more frequently a teacher assesses student progress, the timelier will be instruction that addresses the child’s level of learning. 

Greater Student Learning
The objective in Birchwood’s Talent Development Model is to minimize the time between instruction, pupil performance, assessment, and re-teaching. Small classes facilitate the teacher’s ability to observe student performance. The shorter the time lapse in this cycle, the greater will be student learning.

The cycle is similar in each subject. First, a teacher creates a learning experience. It might be a teacher centered lesson, or a student-centered experience. The teacher expects that the result of the lesson or activity will be student learning. The learning objective might be skill related, like learning how to add fractions with unlike denominators, or it might be related to a conceptual understanding like comparing the experiences of pioneers and Native Americans during western expansion. In either case, the teacher is attuned to the performance objective she hopes to see demonstrated by her students. 

If she is going to enable her students to reach the performance objective, her instructional plan must be followed by assessment, and to be effective, this assessment should occur as soon as possible. In the assessment the teacher asks herself: Does this student understand? Has the student mastered the performance objective? What kind of measurement is necessary so that the student and I both know that mastery has been achieved? Does the student display enough understanding so that we can proceed to the next level of learning? Should we repeat the lesson?

Granted the immediacy of the assessment will vary by subject or lesson. Nevertheless, the principle remains the same. All knowledge is based upon previous knowledge. The sooner a teacher-mentor identifies a child’s needs in relation to the material being studied, the sooner she can adjust her lesson for further student learning. It is obvious that if a teacher has a large class of students, this timely interaction is difficult. 

In fact, when classes are too large, learning assessments will need to be conducted through tests or quizzes. These are sometimes administered long after the learning experience – even a week or more after the lesson. This does not imply that tests or quizzes are not effective measurements. They can be a part of a teacher’s overall assessment. But if this is the sole means by which student progress is assessed it limits or slows student learning.  

For example, imagine that a child fails a quiz or test. From the time the student took the test to the time it was graded and handed back may take up to one week. There are two problems here. Not only does it become clear that the child did not master the materials, but neither the student nor the teacher discovered the failure until a week later! Time has been wasted! This teacher has lost effective instructional time. If the assessment had been done in a timelier manner, through any number of assessment techniques, then the teacher would have understood the problem immediately and could have taken steps to remedy the problem. She could have greatly reduced the cycle of time for teaching-assessment-reteaching. More learning and greater mastery would have been achieved.  

A small class size minimizes reliance on tests and quizzes and allows for more timely assessment practices that accelerate student learning.  

At Birchwood, it is imperative to keep our classes small, revolving around the practice of The Success Cycle.