Wolfe's school has three reduced-size classes in Great Start. The odd thing is that, at first glance, Anne Tsuneishi's class doesn't seem especially small. It's only in comparison to the more familiar overstuffed classrooms that this one looks sparsely populated. This morning, Tsuneishi's students are spread out around her on the floor for storybook time, legs outstretched and crossed, hands mostly idle. But with this more manageable number, Tsuneishi is able to spot when a wriggle or a twitch is about to escalate into distraction or disruption, and nip it in the bud.
Less time is spent on classroom management, and there are fewer discipline problems.
But here, they're getting attention, so they don't have to act up to get it. While the class as a whole may not look particularly small, the change in class size is stunning when students break up for small group work, as in Andrea Holzapfel's classroom next door. Their assignment involves reading comprehension. Since children sometimes recite familiar books by rote instead of by reading, the text from a favorite story has been printed on a worksheet, with the sentences out of order. The students must read the sentences to cut and paste them back into the proper order.