By Annie Carey, Rivendell Younger Kids Teacher

One of the first things parents notice as they tour Rivendell is that children of different ages are learning and socializing together happily within each classroom. Our multi-age classrooms help create a strong feeling of family that we all love at Rivendell, and they also do a lot more to benefit our children.

Just what are some of the benefits of a multi-age classroom?

Emphasis is on the child, rather than the curriculum.
Children are viewed as unique individuals. The teacher focuses on teaching each child according to their own strengths, unlike in same-grade classrooms that often expect all children to be at the same place at the same time with regard to ability. Students learn at their own pace, rather than being taught skills that they are not ready for or that they have already mastered. The focus becomes the child’s learning rather than the adult’s teaching. Children are invited to take charge of their learning, by having more opportunities for choices. This sense of “ownership” and self-direction is the foundation for lifelong learning.

Students benefit from peer learning.
Children often learn best from one another. Younger children watch the older ones enjoy advanced, challenging work, and this inspires them. They look to the older children for guidance, and the older children have the opportunity to serve as mentors and take on leadership roles. Leading, whether by modeling classroom procedures or helping a younger student add numbers, is a critical experience for a young child. Integrating this leadership mindset into the classroom shifts teaching strategies. There is not so much lecturing as there is group work.

Children learn diverse social skills and tend to cooperate more than compete.
Classrooms become caring communities that help children socially as well as academically. Students learn skills in an integrated, authentic context, rather than in isolation. In essence, multiage classrooms better reflect the natural groupings in society - in our neighborhoods and communities - and provide more opportunities for the exchange of ideas and experiences. Children are more likely to cooperate than compete. The spirit of cooperation and caring makes it possible for children to help each other as individuals, rather than see each other as competitors.

Children tend to have a positive outlook towards themselves and school.
Research has shown that students in multi-age classrooms were found to have higher self-esteem, more positive self-concepts, less anti-social behavior and better attitudes toward school than their peers in single-grade classes. When children observe different learning levels around them, they naturally develop a “growth mindset.” Having a growth mindset (the belief that you are in control of your own ability, and can learn and improve) is an important key to success.

As we watch children learn to grow at Rivendell, we see these benefits of our multi-age classrooms in action every day. We are happy to know that Rivendell kids are getting the foundation they need to become happy, well-adjusted individuals later in life.

Learn more about Rivendell at rivendell-school.org or visit our admissions pages to schedule a tour. Enrollment for the 2020-21 school year is open to the public on Monday, Feb. 3. We currently have spaces for preschool - 5th-grade students. Learn more at https://www.rivendell-school.org/admissions/.

By Holly Warren, Principal, Rivendell School

What was once a required literacy skill is now being cut from school curriculums. This raises the question - is cursive writing still relevant?

During a visit to one of our Middle Kids classrooms this week a second-grader brought work up for me to check. As I looked down at the page, it was her name written three different times in cursive that caught my attention. Seeing this brought back memories of being a student and perfecting my “L” loop and making sure my “g” hung down and didn’t look like a “q.” I’m sure many of you can remember this time in your education and may wonder - are all students still doing this? Will students of the 21st century have similar memories? Is cursive writing still relevant? 

A Closer Look 

Rivendell’s Instructional Leadership Team is constantly evaluating the changing landscape of education and what skills our students will need to be successful in the future, a future we can not even imagine. As an independent school, we have the flexibility to include what we think is important in our curriculum. To ensure we were making the right investment in cursive writing, we rolled up our sleeves and dug into the research about what turned out to be a very relevant subject matter.  

Clear Benefits 

As our research continued it became apparent that cursive writing is not just about letter formation and communication. It also:

• Develops motor skills
• Increases memory and comprehension 
• Leads to cognitive development, self-esteem, and academic success 

With this knowledge, how could we not teach this skill that is quickly becoming a long, lost art? Read on for an explanation of the benefits our team discovered when we took a closer look at cursive writing. 

Motor skill development

• Cursive writing requires a very different skillset from print writing.  It involves using the hand muscles in a different way and activates a different part of the brain. 
• Printing and typing do not stimulate the synchronicity between the brain’s right and left hemisphere, but cursive does.
• It is a good exercise in using kinesthetic skills. 

Benefits

• Cursive writing helps train the brain to integrate visual, and tactile information and fine motor dexterity.
• Students with learning disabilities, specifically dyslexia, can have a very hard time with writing in print, the connected letters and fluid motion of cursive handwriting are especially beneficial to students with disorders such as dyslexia and dysgraphia.  It activates parts of the brain that lead to increased language fluency.

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Memory and comprehension 

• Researchers found that students who take notes by hand perform better on conceptual questions than students who take notes on laptops. 
• Students who take notes by hand actually digest the content and reframe it in their own words -- a process that increases both understanding and recall.
• There is a connection between handwriting and composition quality.  Lacking fluency in handwriting causes difficulty in higher-order thoughts and sequencing.

Benefits

• Learning cursive develops fine motor skills and writing in longhand generally helps students retain more information and generate more ideas.  Studies have shown that kids who learn cursive rather than simply manuscript writing score better on reading and spelling tests, perhaps because the linked-up cursive forces writers to think of words as wholes instead of parts.
• Writing letters improve letter recognition.
• Cursive writing acts as a grounding and sensory integration exercise for those with behavioral or sensory processing disorders. It likely even calms neuro-typical adults and children and can train self-control.

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Cognitive development, self-esteem, academic success 

• The brain has to develop “functional specialization,” integrating thinking, movement, and sensation.
• Cursive has the benefit of being both artistic and highly personal. It is an important step in developing a personal style and voice. Students are not automatons, and education should include tools that encourage individual personality. 
• While certain gifted students may rise to the top again and again in the academic subjects, any student can aspire to have excellent handwriting and can achieve the goal with practice.

Benefits

• When students write confidently and legibly, their academics as a whole seem to improve. 

Do you have memories of learning cursive? What was the trickiest letter for you to master?