Healthy lifestyle

Questioning the whole concept
At times, the last thing pupils have on their minds is to help those they feel they are superior to. Why should they? They become impatient with the highest mistake made by their peers. Developing the ability to ‘teach’ takes years in collage, so it may be wishful thinking for teachers to designate a teaching role to pupils. Just because pupils know the subject reasonably well does not necessarily mean that they can explain it to others, and if they do end up getting frustrated we don’t know what psychological harm is being inflicted on them and their peers.
Learning based on levels
Another option is to split the class into ability groups. The challenge for the teacher here is the need to have different material for the groups, that is to say the need to prepare two or three lessons for one class. A benefit of this is that the pupils can learn from each other, without feeling intimidated by more able pupils. Rearranging the classroom furniture and group tables can facilitate this support. A word of caution, however. The teacher will need to monitor the weaker groups more closely in case group members lead each other too much astray.
Classroom management
There can be conflict in the modern classroom, with the teacher trying to impact his/her knowledge and the pupil trying to resist authority. Pair work and group work in the mixed ability classroom can ease some of this tension, displacing most of the problems relating to learning and authority among the pupils themselves. Teachers are then more tree of power struggles within the classroom and can devote themselves to motivating pupils and promoting learning in the classroom.
The teachers role.
If the better ability pupils are able to support their peers well in pairs or small groups, this can have implications for teaching. The teacher can become more of a facilitator as he/she supports pupils who are helping others and encourage lower ability pupils not to give up in the learning process. Work with pupils can become more individualized as they are freed from the normal teaching constraints of holding the attention of the whole class. Classroom can then become a class of p