Trinity Lutheran School is structured with two grades in each classroom starting in the first grade. While this is not the common approach to setting up schools today in the public sector, there are several documented beneficial aspects of the multi-grade classroom setting. Research shows that when students have the same teacher for consecutive years, the teacher has a deeper understanding of each child’s educational, social, and emotional needs. That means that when that students starts the second year with a particular teacher, that teacher is already tailoring lessons right for that group of students on the very first days of school. It has also been found that students develop higher cognitive skills faster and show significant gains in reading and language skills compared to their peers in single grade classrooms.
On a psychosocial level, the students also benefit that every other year they will have the opportunity to be the leaders and experts among their peers. This gives them a chance to build leadership skills, experience more responsibilities, and have the opportunity to nurture their younger peers, as those students learn to adjust to the new environment. Having this nurturing role has shown to build a greater level of respect among students and for their teacher, which leads to fewer disciplinary distractions in a school year. Students that were studied in multi-grade classroom settings also reported experiencing lower stress levels on the first day of school as the students and teachers already have a prior rapport built from the previous year.