At Beach Court, we believe in multiage classrooms! Why multiage? Why not! Multiage classrooms allow students to build stronger relationships with peers and teachers, advance quicker academically and receive more targeted, personalized instruction.

Here is some more information:

What are multi-age classrooms?
Multi-age classrooms, also referred to as mixed age or mixed grade classrooms, are classrooms where students work and learn together across more than one grade level. In Beach Court’s ECE-5th grade classes, students work and learn together across two grade levels. Our classes are grouped as follows: ECE is 3s and 4s, K/1, 2/3 and 4/5th. Each multi-age class is taught by a teacher and supported by a second educator.

Why do we have multi-age classrooms?
In too many schools children are hampered by a fear of shame. And some may be bored. We believe that children deserve a developmental approach that engages and challenges children as they are ready. Children learn and grow at varied times and rates and therefore there are great advantages to a more flexible, multi-age classroom model. The multi-age model we use in these upper elementary years allows us to honor students along a typical continuum of growth and development rather than more strictly as members of a particular grade with rigid grade level expectations. In real life, people, even adults, develop and learn at different paces. Less pressure on rigid benchmarks during these crucial elementary years frees students to learn where they are. We feel this model best addresses the needs of our students by affording greater teaching and grouping flexibility (ability, affinity/interest, mastery, etc.) and more differentiation in various learning and teaching modules matches our student-focused philosophy.

In a sense, all Beach Court classrooms are treated as multi-age learning environments, regardless of whether they include students from multiple grade levels, because even within a single grade, children can be a year or more apart in age and development. Our goal is to help students feel engaged, challenged and supported wherever they are developmentally and to retain a flexible attitude toward grade level benchmarks.

What does the research on multi-age education say?
Mattern and Yates discovered that lower-grade students have a “broader social experience and increased opportunities to lead and follow, and to form stable peer relationships” (1995). Younger students can count on the teacher to answer their instructional questions, but can also get assistance from older students in the class. (Our mentor programs help encourage this as well.) Students in the lower grade can also benefit from enriched learning by their exposure to curricular material designed for a higher grade (Society for Developmental Education 1993).

Research done by Barrie Thorne, author of Gender Play: Boys and Girls in School showed the children in mixed age groupings are less prone to “stereotypical gender play.” A study by Stright and French (1986) discovered that children aged 7-11 are more likely to take on leadership opportunities when there is age disparity in a group.