PERU — Dirigo Elementary School will showcase one of its learning programs for a group of educators from South Dakota on Tuesday, Jan. 12, Principal Charlie Swan said.

The visitors are touring Maine schools that have multi-grade, multi-age learning programs meant to create individualistic learning, he said. Dirigo began such a program — called a village — about four years ago. 

“It’s a multi-age and multi-grade program where we took a group of third-, fourth- and fifth-graders, mixed them together, and allowed them to work on math, reading and writing,” he said. “They were the same subjects that would be taught in a more traditional classroom.”

Several fifth-graders may be mixed in with third- and fourth-graders, “depending on what the students need,” he said.

The main focus when the program first started was to help students who were missing class and getting in trouble become more involved, he said.

“The first thing we saw when we started the village was that attendance improved, and that kids who were getting in trouble were spending less time in the office,” Swan said. “The idea is also to eliminate the grade line, and the thought that just because your child is 11 years old, it doesn’t mean he needs to move on to a certain grade.”

Swan said the South Dakota group — a principal, an assistant principal, a curriculum coordinator and four teachers from an elementary school — are “trying to start a program that would mix students from grades two to five,” he said. “They haven’t done it yet. The point of their tour is to look at similar programs and see if it’s something that would fit them.”

mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net

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