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From: Greg
Date: 06 Feb 2006
Time: 19:54:10 -0600
Remote Name: 71.197.47.204
At a school where I did part of my student teaching, the principal had the pods clustered by "family groups" rather than grade level. A typical pod would have 2nd through 4th grade or 3rd through 5th, etc. It was an interesting concept, to say the least, which had advantages along with disadvantages. The theory was that it gave opportunities for the type of groupings you mentioned -- interest, cross grade/stage, friendship, etc. In my opinion, it wasn't working well, and at the time, I didn't have the experience to determine what it needed to work better. I am still not sure if the advantages could have ever outweighed the disadvantages. I do know that at least the principal was trying to think outside of the box. (Hmmm...was she G/T?) I think you are right, however, that now with ever increasing emphasis on test results in Texas, we find ourselves with less time for grand experiments to test our well thought out, research based theories.