Having experienced teaching classes with more than 30 students at a time before, I can say that it has drastic effects on student learning. For one, the teacher’s time with individual students during class time is heavily divided. I can remember times when a student had their hand up for ten minutes or more waiting on a response to a simple question while I was working my way over. I felt terrible not being able to get to them quickly – they often grew very frustrated. Students often verbalized their frustration with the amount of students in the room, felt claustrophobic, ignored, or distracted. I was less able to get to know students on an individual basis and work with their individual needs.
Large Class Size Leads to Lecturing
The noise level during interactive activities could become very counter-productive to learning, even if students were all on-task. This type of problem deters teachers from using some of the more effective strategies that involve movement, playing games, discussing texts, collaborating on activities, and in foreign language classes producing the language. It leads to excessive use of techniques such as lecturing, worksheets, and rote memorization that are considered less effective and don’t work for all students just because of the logistics. If students are off-task, behavior problems escalate quickly simply because the teacher cannot keep up with everything that is going on. This can be especially problematic for new teachers and teachers who rely more on their interpersonal relationships with students to keep things under control.
Large Class Size Leads to Less Feedback
Outside of the classroom, large class size leads to decreased feedback and grades. Students need feedback, especially on their writing skills, in order to grow at all. Without it, they are merely practicing the same mistakes over and over again and reinforcing bad habits. Common sense tells you that having more papers to grade leads to less time and attention spent on each paper. Alternately, the teacher is likely to put in less grades per semester, which means that the grading is less accurate overall and therefore less fair. An overloaded teacher also may panic and start grading things more frivolously, or add “fluff” grades based on “class participation” (something that can be done well but can also be manipulated to look like it’s done well) to fill out the grade book.
Lastly, the teacher is less able to focus on interventions for his or her students because of the sheer volume. Instead of carefully logging information, he or she may have to write quick notes or just prioritize for students who have the worst behavior problems. In these scenarios, students who are struggling quietly tend to get overlooked.
How to Combat the Effects of Large Class Size
Overall, it is pretty obvious that increasing class size will most likely have a negative impact on student’s learning, unless the teacher is absolutely outstanding and always at the top of his/her game. However, there are a lot of things that parents can do to combat the effects of large class size.
- The first thing that parents can do is to familiarize themselves with the content and the syllabus. If the content is too challenging for parents, they can assist through organization, project planning, and time management.
- Parents can compensate for decreased attention from the teacher in many areas, especially in holding their students accountable for assignments.
- Parents can also contact the teacher and ask if they can help with anything specific, or if the teacher has tutoring hours outside of class that their student can attend.
- If the student is struggling with content in a specific academic area, hiring a tutor might be a good idea. This is especially true if the content area is one that builds upon itself, such as math. Losing just a few weeks of math content can have a real impact on the overall learning of the content.
- Proactively email your child’s teachers to determine if there are specific behavioral issues to work on at home. If the student has difficulty with organization, Educational Coaching can be a great option. Also consider these great productivity and organization apps.
- Find educational apps or online resources such as educational YouTube Channels to help your child learn. There are a lot of resources out there to help them!