For Current Scotland 5th Graders, Middle School Will Be So Last Year

This year, fifth graders at Scotland Elementary School are serving as guinea pigs. 

Scotland is piloting a "departmentalized instruction" format where students switch teachers for a few periods each day; at the same time, principals of the district's five other elementary schools and central administration officials are working out the details of a district-wide departmentalized fifth grade curriculum set to debut in the 2011-12 school year.

In the pilot program, each of three fifth grade classes switches between three subject teachers for science, math and social studies lessons. Teachers are responsible for teaching language arts lessons to their own classes.

Scotland's pilot program is in fact the reincarnation of an old departmentalized approach the school had used for years before former superintendent Kenneth Freeston decided to discontinue the practice.

This mode of instruction, which is gaining support in the scholarly literature, helps students prepare for the middle school experience of switching classes all day.

"For those years that we weren't departmentalizing, [middle school teachers] noticed a real difference in the students being prepared for the middle school experience," Scotland Principal Mark Solomon said. "And really the middle school principals wanted us to go back to the departmentalized approach."

Many other Ridgefield elementary schools also used to have departmentalized classes but gradually did away with the practice as it fell out of favor in the academic literature. Solomon said Freeston asked him to discontinue the program at Scotland three years ago in the interest of district-wide consistency.

"At that time, the administration decided that we should have self-contained classrooms, because it was more of an elementary school model," Veterans Park Principal Julie Droller said. "It's hard for [elementary school students] to get used to three different teachers and three different sets of expectations."

Departmentalization can also make crossover between subjects more difficult and can limit flexibility if a class needs extra time on a particular subject. Holli Levy, a longtime fifth grade teacher at Veteran's Park, said this was part of the reason the school went back to self-contained classrooms; research indicated that students needed more time on math, an adjustment that was impossible with the departmentalized schedule since math, science and social studies had to get equal time.

There were also concerns that the No Child Left Behind Act would prevent teachers from teaching a specialized area without specialized certification, a problem the Scotland program avoids because the teachers do not teach one subject exclusively—each also teaches language arts.

Despite its drawbacks, there are many advantages to the departmentalized approach. In addition to helping students prepare for middle school, the format allows teachers to specialize in a particular area, giving them more time to develop lesson plans and promoting curriculum consistency.

After Freeston retired and Deborah Low took over as superintendent in July 2007, Solomon decided to wait a few years before raising the issue again. When he did, Low readily agreed to a pilot program and discussions to create a district-wide policy of departmentalized instruction for fifth grade.

"It's something that we're very interested in looking into," Droller said. "There are very good reasons to be departmentalized, and very good reasons to be contained.  But it's also a matter of how it's done."