Elinda wrote:
I recall having very little interaction with the older grades when I was in Kindergarten, 1st & 2nd grades.
This.
Jophiel wrote:
My K-6 school was pretty well segregated. The bottom level (it was sort of a split level, built on a slope) was the kindergarten, gym and music rooms. The upper level had a 1-3 wing and a 4-6 wing. The bottom level and both wings had their own entrances. So if you were in 5th grade, you never really saw any 1-3 graders except at the very start or end of the day outside the school. Even lunch and recess times were broken up so you didn't have sixth graders whipping dodge balls at the second graders.
Or this.
I didn't move around as much as some, but the four schools I attended from K-8 all separated the grades. In Kindergarten, I don't recall having any interaction with older kids at all (which was at a public school, cause the parochial school didn't have a kindergarten back then). The next school was a 1-8 parochial school, and I know for a fact that the 1st and 2nd graders were in one section (both their classrooms and play/lunch areas). I believe they also divided the other grades into 3-5 and 6-8 in terms of where classrooms were, but the playground was more shared (but each group pretty much stayed in their area IIRC). From 4-6 grade I was in a public school, and I remember there were two different playgrounds on different sides of a row of buildings, with different grades in each (can't remember the ranges though). 7th and 8th grades were at another parochial school, and in this one, the playground areas were separated between the higher grades. There was an upper yard and a lower yard, and 1-5 stayed down below while 6-8 were up top. I seem to recall there was a bid deal about the younger grades not being allowed to come up the stairs to the top area. That school also had a uniform switch at that grade split for girls. Up to 5th grade, they wore jumpers, while 6-8th they wore skirts and blouses (yes, Catholic school uniforms, I know you're all jealous). It made it pretty easy to tell who was allowed "up top" and who wasn't. I honestly have no clue how or if they segregated the younger grades though.
There's a hell of a lot of back and forth in the education community about the whole middle school vs junior high vs something else. The tricky transition grades tend to be 6th and 9th, and most ideas tend to revolve around how to deal with that age range from others that may be problematic for them, or vice versa. The most common adjustment is to lump the 6th graders with the 7th and 8th graders into a middle school, so as to put them with the rest of the kids going through puberty and otherwise acting up and being demon hellspawn. Problem being that kids aren't all the same age in 6th grade, so now you've got "kids" in a small school environment (just three grades) with 9th graders. Another proposed solution is to keep the 6th graders in the grade school, and have just 7th and 8th in middle school (or junior high, or whatever they call it where you live). This is a pretty common solution, although more schools are going to 6-8 middle schools instead. A less common solution involves the problem of 9th graders in high school. There's a *huge* maturity gap between them and seniors, so the idea is to make middle school be 7-9th. Tons of resistance to this though, since the whole 4 year high school thing has become a pretty strong cultural thing.
About the only thing everyone agrees on is that 7th and 8th graders more or less need to be separated from everyone else. You know, cause of the whole demon hellspawn thing.