conuly

*nods* That's fair. Teachers who are overworked with too many kids can't accommodate differences as well. I was very lucky to be in a small class for first through third grade (same class, same teacher, special program). And she was very accommodating. Twice I was my own reading group, once for being the slowest in the class and needing extra help, and once when I passed the other kids in my grade. But we also did a lot of independent work, which made it easier on the teacher. And third graders had two work options that also made it easier for the teacher - they could use extra time to design work sheets and if the teacher approved them, they would be given to the class as assignments and you'd be exempt from doing your own worksheet. This was awesome and cool and I abused the heck out of that system. The other thing was third grade was the year of research project. Each third grader picked a topic of their choosing (I chose dinosaurs, one of my classmates chose holidays, I forget other examples) and any day you wanted to you could opt-out of the normal class assignment to work on your research project as long as you showed your work at the end of the day. At the end of the year you had a big book made with the results of your research (half pages of writing and half illustrations). This was really a wonderful experience, but it also meant third graders were doing less work that the teacher had to generate, and students were sometimes designing worksheets for the class for the teacher.

But we were expected to do a lot of working independently. We'd be given our assignments for the day, and then we'd work on them, and small groups would be called up throughout the day to work with the teacher on various subjects. Except for circle time for things like the teacher reading a story out loud to the class, the class listening to a classical music piece (every other month we studied a new composer), looking at reproductions of famous paintings and discussing them (every other month was a famous artist) or possibly similar things I've forgotten.

It was a fantastic class.