ROOM OF THEIR OWN
Single-sex classes score big
October 22, 2009
Louise Brown
EDUCATION REPORTER
They talk more, they move more, they fight for the spotlight.
So one trick to teaching boys, Lukrica Prugo has learned, is to keep changing classroom gears.
"Give girls an assignment for 10 minutes and they'll stay at it for 20. But give boys a task for 10 minutes and they're back talking in five," said the Grade 7 teacher at Etobicoke's Humberwood Downs Junior Middle Academy, which has been testing some all-girl and all-boy classes for four years.
"If you know boys learn differently, you break things into chunks – I talk for five minutes, give them a problem for five minutes, bring them back to the front for five minutes and keep it moving," said Prugo, leading her first all-boy class after two years with an all-girl class.
"There's a different energy than coed, but at the end of the day, they're as productive as girls. Boys just give it to me in pieces."
As the Toronto District School Board considers more single-sex classes to boost boys' learning, this 1,100-student complex near Finch Ave. and Highway 427 is one of a handful of schools paving the way.
Principal Beverley Muir is so impressed by the results – fewer trips to the office, a strong sense of family in classrooms and huge buy-in from the largely South Asian neighbourhood – she added two single-sex Grade 5 classes this fall, in addition to those in grades 6, 7 and 8.
This year, teachers assigned students to either single-sex or coed classes, rather than filling them by request as in previous years.
And while Muir originally launched the project as a way to encourage soft-spoken girls of Indian and Pakistani heritage to "find their voice" before they hit high school, she said boys seem to benefit, too.
"We don't guarantee marks will skyrocket right away, but we do find there is a greater degree of focus in the classes and better comments about learning skills on report cards – more homework completed by both boys and girls."
As public debate grew Wednesday over the call for more all-boy classes from the board's new director of education, some welcomed the focus on boys. Others criticized it as an unhealthy separation of the sexes, but Muir disagrees.
"Is it segregation? No, I see this as `congregation,' like we congregate students in French immersion schools or schools for the arts or elite gymnasts."
While Humberwood Downs offers both single-sex and coed classes in grades 5 through 8, teachers often recommend the former for students who could benefit without the distraction of the opposite sex, Muir said. Each class still includes children of a range of ability.
This is 12-year-old Manvir Kahlon's second year in an all-boy class.
"It's easier to be yourself in front of everyone when there aren't girls in the class. I feel like I'm answering more questions and my marks have gone from Cs and Bs to Bs and As."
Toronto Star