Mixed Classes

[OliveOil_Med]

Okay, we know that some classes, the student take with another House, and some they take with just their own House members. In the Harry Potter books, do we know which classes students share and which ones they take alone?

[inspirations]

Share:

• Potions

• Care of Magical Creatures

• Herbology

From the books it sounded as if DADA, Transfiguration and Divination were purely for houses, though I could be entirely wrong. Hope that helps if not a little.

xx

[Equinox Chick]

Ernie MacMillan mentions Hermione being in his Arithmancy class so perhaps the 'elective' subjects are mixed (Ancient Runes, Muggle Studies) although that doesn't explain Divination which seems to be only Gryffindors.

DADA in NEWT year is mixed and Potions NEWT isn't just Gryffindors and Slytherins because Ernie's there.

History of Magic? - Binns, gets peeople's names wrong but only seems to mention Gryffs.

Charms? - Not sure but this seems to be only Gryffindors too.

Side issue- The Gryffindors don't seem to share any lessons with Ravenclaw do they?

[OliveOil_Med]

I think that the elective classes might have all houses in them just because they are all so spread out, I don't see how they could get a full class otherwise.

What I notice in the books as well is that Gryffindor, whoever is Head of House of the class they are taking, that is also the class who they share with a House (Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, Potions with the Slytherins). Maybe they take Charms with the Ravenclaws.

I'm pretty sure that, at least for the night Astronomy classes, all the students are there together. There are only so many days in a week, and it seems like the most practical way to keep student for staying up too late (no doubt the teachers the morning after would have plenty of complaints).

But heres what we have so far:
Electives - Shared
Potions - Shared
Herbology - Shared
DADA - Alone

But why do you think some classes are shared, and others aren't?

[Karaley Dargen]

I think that the elective classes might have all houses in them just because they are all so spread out, I don't see how they could get a full class otherwise.

What I notice in the books as well is that Gryffindor, whoever is Head of House of the class they are taking, that is also the class who they share with a House (Herbology with the Hufflepuffs, Potions with the Slytherins). Maybe they take Charms with the Ravenclaws.

I think that's just a coincidence - because why should the Gryffindors have all the classes with the teacher's house and not the other two (so, Gryffindor has Herbology with Hufflepuff, Potions with Slytherin, Charms with Ravenclaw, and the others just mix, because...?)
Also, I think they have Charms alone. They practise a lot of charms that make things zoom this or that way, and it seems to take a lot of room.

But heres what we have so far:
Electives - Shared
Potions - Shared
Herbology - Shared
DADA - Alone

But why do you think some classes are shared, and others aren't?

As you mentioned before, I think subject like Muggle Studies, Arithmancy and Runes are mixed classes, because they wouldn't make a class just for those two Gryffindors in one year who take Runes, and they are obviously the less popular subjects among at least the Gryffindors (of course I can imagine Ravenclaws rather taking something like Arithmancy, maybe Hufflepuffs taking Muggle Studies...).

Potions and Herbology - I think that has something to do with resources. I always figured that they didn't have enough plants/enough room to store the plants/that the plants need very special seasonal caring, so there have to be more pupils to work faster on them.
Same with Care of Magical Creatures: They have a certain type of animal, and there are two different classes (Gryff/Slith + Rav/Huff) to take care of them, so they share one whatever between two people, ...
I'm actually losing a bit track of myself here, because obviously you could still have two pupils take care of one creature if they're from the same house...

So here's the other way round:
Transfiguration is very complicated, Charms takes rather much space, in DADA the teacher has to be able to have a clear overview over all students (their progress/weaknesses), as does the Divination teacher.
The other subjects, like Potions, Herbology, CoMC, don't require those things, as it's mainly physical work, so they can mix classes here and don't have to have a teacher talk to only 8-10 students for two hours.

[OliveOil_Med]

I just recently had another though. What do you think the teachers take into account as far as numbers go for a class? What would be a plausible minimum to have in a class? And a maximum? Do you think this could have any factor in whether or not classes double up or not?

[Karaley Dargen]

At my old school, minimum was three (e.g. Ancient Runes N.E.W.T. class may have that size), maximum was 35 students per class. Apart from that, if students in the very small classes were missing so that only one was left, class had to be cancelled, because for some reason it was against the rules to have a teacher teach only one single student.

It's different at university (I once met someone who had a class alone with the professor), but I think the 3-35 makes a lot of sense, but depending on the subject. As mentioned before, I think DADA and Charms take to much space and the teacher has to pay special attention, so here a maximum would be 20 in my opinion.