Nineteen in Class 3, Fifteen in Class 4, One Blackboard
The primary school in a hill-block village has three teachers for Classes 1 to 5. Sunita-ben takes Classes 3 and 4 together in one room from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. - 19 children in Class 3, 15 in Class 4 - while the head teacher takes Class 5 and the third teacher takes Classes 1 and 2. She has one blackboard, 20 Class 3 EVS textbooks, 12 Class 4 EVS textbooks, chart paper that has run out, and no photocopying budget. Block practice requires one 'activity-based' lesson plan per week. Last month her Class 4 group spent 25 minutes copying from the board while she ran a decoding drill with Class 3; the head teacher wrote in the supervision diary that 'Class 4 was idle for half the period', and the cluster resource person is visiting next week to look for grade-appropriate activity in both grades within the same period. Sunita-ben knows the two syllabi overlap on the theme of water but has never been shown how to plan for two grades at once.
1. Design the 40-minute water lesson so neither grade sits idle for long. Give the time structure, what each grade is doing, and what Sunita-ben herself is doing.
Read the worked answer
The organising principle is that she teaches one grade directly while the other works on a task it can complete without her, and those blocks are short - under ten minutes - because waiting is what produces the idling the head teacher recorded.
- 0–5 min, together: a real object - a leaking tap or a pot of water with a cup. Both grades answer one question orally: 'Where did this water come from?' Common launch, no preparation cost.
- 5–15 min, teacher with Class 3: sorting pictures drawn on the board (uses of water / sources) and a measuring-cup activity. Class 4 works on a board-written task: list every water source within ten minutes of the school and estimate the distance and time to fetch water. Both tasks use the board only.
- 15–20 min, whole room: water break and a 30-second reset. Do not skip this; it prevents the drift.
- 20–30 min, teacher with Class 4: the difference between a source that dries up and one that does not, using their survey data. Class 3 meanwhile completes a drawing-and-labelling task from the textbook, page number on the board.
- 30–35 min, cross-grade pairs: each Class 4 child asks one Class 3 child the survey questions and records the answers. Both are working; neither is tutoring new content.
- 35–40 min, together: one closing question each, answered in the notebook.
Her own movement is scripted: the board must carry the Class 3 task instructions before she turns to Class 4, or she will be interrupted and Class 3 will idle instead. The 25-minute copying block disappears because copying is what she reaches for when she has not prepared a self-running task.
2. Sunita-ben is tempted to use her Class 4 children as helpers for Class 3. Where is the line between legitimate peer support and using older children as unpaid teachers?
Read the worked answer
The test
The line is not about whether children help each other; it is about whose learning is being spent. A pairing is legitimate when both children are practising something each has already been taught, and illegitimate when the older child's instructional time is used to deliver content that is the teacher's responsibility.
Rules that follow from that test
- Practise, never introduce. A Class 4 child may hear a Class 3 child read a familiar page; she may not teach a new sound.
- Time-capped. Eight to ten minutes, timed, so the helper returns to her own task.
- The helper has her own assessed work. If the Class 4 portfolio contains no evidence of Class 4 learning, the arrangement has failed regardless of how well Class 3 did.
- Rotate. The same fluent reader must not lose her own practice every week; the same struggling child must not always be the one being helped.
- Same-grade buddies are often better. A Class 4 pair working on the survey task gives both children grade-level practice and costs the teacher nothing.
What to say to the head teacher if challenged
Frame it as classroom organisation, not as staffing: the older children are revising through explaining, the younger ones get extra oral practice, and every child's notebook shows their own grade's work. That is a defensible answer to 'Class 4 was idle'; 'the older ones teach the younger ones' is not, because it concedes the point.
3. The cluster resource person will look for grade-appropriate activity in both grades in the same period, and there is no photocopying budget. What can Sunita-ben show, and how does she check both grades' learning in the last five minutes?
Read the worked answer
What she can put in front of the CRP, at no cost
- A two-column plan with separate learning outcomes for each grade against the same theme, so the overlap is visible on paper rather than asserted.
- The board itself, photographed at the start and end of the period - it carries the Class 3 task, the Class 4 task and two sets of success criteria. This is the cheapest evidence of differentiated tasking she has.
- Children's notebooks, which show Class 3 drawing and labelling and Class 4 recording a survey with distances and times. Grade-appropriate work is visible in the artefacts.
- A five-line tally sheet she keeps herself: which children met the outcome, which need support tomorrow.
The five-minute check
One task, two entry points, answered in the notebook and read while the class copies the next day's date:
- Class 3: name two sources of water you saw on the way to school and one way water is wasted.
- Class 4: from your survey, which source is farthest, and what would happen to the village if it dried up?
She collects the notebooks at the door, sorts them into three piles (met / partly / not yet) in about four minutes, and uses the piles to set the next day's grouping. That is the honest answer to the CRP's question: the check is short, it is on both grades, and it changes what happens tomorrow, which is more than a photographed worksheet would show.