LOOPING

Looping



Looping

Looping has been around for a while in various forms. Rudolf Steiner? an Austrian educator and philosopher living in Germany in the early 1900s? founded the Waldorf Schools. These schools educated the children of the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory workers. Steiner believed that a long-term relationship with the teacher was beneficial to children. Waldorf teachers stayed with their students from grades one through eight. Today in Germany? students and teachers stay together from grades one through four.

Looping? also known as multi-year placement is not the same as multi-age placement. Looping involves keeping discrete groups of similarly-aged students together for a period of several years with the same teacher. In multi-age placements? students of various ages are together in the same classroom. Many schools considering a multi-age program view looping as a solid first step. With looping? a teacher can implement a more coherent instructional plan appropriate to the child's development.

Looping is simple. It usually costs the school very little and it is easy to implement. More common in Europe? where looping was endorsed by Austrian educator Rudolf Steiner? it has been implemented successfully for years in Germany? most notably by Anne Ratzki of the Koln-Holweide School. Looping is also becoming more common in Japanese? Israeli? and Montessori Schools. Although not much quantitative research exists on the benefits of looping? qualitative research supports the process and indicates that looping has several advantages for both students and teachers.

Academic Benefits

Teachers gain extra teaching time. “Getting-to-know-you” time becomes virtually unnecessary during the second year. We don't lose several weeks each September learning a new set of names? teaching the basic rules to a new set of students? figuring out exactly what they learned the previous year; and we don't lose weeks at the end of the year packing students back up.

Teacher knowledge about a child's intellectual strengths and weaknesses increases in a way that is impossible to achieve in a single year. “Long term teacher/student relationships improve… student performance.” Multi-year teaching offers tremendous possibilities for summertime learning? such as summer reading lists? miniprojects? and field trips.

Beginning a looping program in schools on a voluntary basis allows for low-key and low-impact implementation. However? the burden is still on the administration to assign only willing and capable teachers to multi-year programs. Once successes become evident in the school and teachers see the benefits? more and more teachers will volunteer.

Additionally? multi-year teaming may actually improve teaching. The administration can balance teams based on teacher strengths? team a novice teacher with a more experienced teacher? or create a team where a less able teacher is paired with one or two more effective teachers. If all else fails? and a parent? teacher? or student is still dissatisfied? the option always exists to move that student to another placement the following year? depending on school policies.

Multi-year assignments are an incentive for teachers to try harder to reach kids. With the one-year placements. common in many schools? it is easy to say? “I have this child only for a few ...