How to Deal With Class Size Increases

It’s one of those things you can count on, as school district budgets get smaller, the number of students in classrooms will get bigger. Depending on where you are in the nation, your student to teacher ratio may be 25:1 or as high as 40:1. While there might have been a time in the past when districts could make decisions based on what would be optimum for student progress, this isn’t the time. School boards have to make decisions based on how to survive these rough economic times. However, there are things you can do to make a class size increase a little less painful and ensure that your students are still successful.

The first thing you can do is reduce the time spent lecturing. By doing shorter lessons, and giving students project-based assignments, you will give yourself the opportunity to go around to each student, or group, and discuss their progress. For example, if you have been teaching students about persuasive writing, you could review the elements of persuasive writing one day, come up with topics for an essay the next, outline the rubric you will use for grading, and then divide students into groups. While students are discussing their ideas, and beginning their work, you can meet with them to monitor progress and redirect those who are are having difficulties. While setting up opportunities for students to work on independent projects can be time consuming at the beginning, it can make your teaching more effective. By having students work on projects like this, you free yourself to help those who need it and encourage those who need to push themselves harder.

The next thing you can do to lessen the ill effects of larger classes is to make your classroom lessons as interesting and entertaining as possible. As class size increases, teachers might decide to shy away from more interactive lessons because they think it would be impossible with a large group. But as we all know, it is important to get the crowd on your side. You can do this by incorporating interactive and motivating types of technology into your classroom. For example, the use of an interactive whiteboard allows students to participate in lessons and learn in the manner they have become accustomed to. By being able to click through information shown on different websites, it allows students to interact with the material, and will make it more likely that your students will be listening. In addition, you can save and print out outlines, lists of links, vocabulary, or anything else you would like students to keep for future reference. This will save you time later on.

And don't forget to delegate and manage effectively. Many teachers shy away from asking parents to help with classroom tasks. At the elementary level, teachers should use the parents in their class as resources. You can have parents edit newletters, fill book orders, set up field trips, help in the classroom, etc . . . The sky is the limit. For middle school and high school students delegating might involve having your students help with some tasks, or setting up grading systems so that you can easily see who has met the criteria. This is where management becomes crucial. You can't delegate unless you have clear and simple organizational methods. Before the start of every year, and even during, you should think about how and why you want to do things a certain way. For example, one kindergarten teacher asked parents to put any notes to her in a flowered box at the door before class. She read through them each morning during her break. In this way, she set up a system that would stop parents from interrupting her when she was starting her morning lessons, but would allow them to tell her important information, such as whom a child was going home with that day. While it may be a small change, using techniques like this can make teaching much easier.

The best thing to do when adjusting to class size increases, however, is to take a deep breath, and try to go with it. In this case, there is little anyone can do to stop what is happening, you just have to accept it. As you come up with ideas, and ways to make class size increases work for you, you can share with other teachers. When teachers support each other, it can make even difficult situations a little better.