This blog post was written by my colleague Valerie Klessig-Palm, a Kindergarten teacher at Nuestro Mundo Community School.

Even at the very beginning of their biliteracy trajectory, students in kindergarten display a range of academic and linguistic needs and abilities! At Nuestro Mundo Community School, we have found a way to meet students’ diverse needs while capitalizing on their strengths, and grow ourselves in the process.

What is flexible grouping?

Flexible grouping refers to the process of mixing all students from across a certain grade level and creating small guided groups that have similar strengths and needs in terms of academic skills. Grade-level teammates and support staff, (who, in our case, includes our literacy coach and reading interventionists), each deliver small group instruction to two to three groups within an agreed-upon time frame. Students may go to another classroom to meet with their group, since teachers work not only with students from their respective homeroom, but also with students from other homerooms across their grade. For full documents, see flexible grouping schedule link and flexible grouping menu and resources link. 

Why flexibly group?

There are a number of reasons to flexibly group:

1. Learning: Firstly, since a larger sample size means a wider range of abilities, combining all students from a grade level means guided groups are more precisely leveled, instructional needs are more easily identified, and differentiated instruction is more feasible.

2. Language: This model can give attention to language. There are times where students are grouped according to language needs so that instruction can be tailored. There are other times where a group is intentionally mixed so that students can draw upon each other’s linguistic resources.

3.  Professional development: Flexible grouping allows staff to build their capacity by working together to plan, reflect and adjust instruction and share, try out, and debrief on new resources.

4. Relationships: Another reason to group flexibly is that teachers are able to connect more deeply with students from other grade-level homerooms and therefore have a greater sense of shared responsibility for all students in their grade level.

5. Shared ownership: Lastly, grouping flexibly gives both students and teachers opportunities to switch up the environment and work with new faces. For example, if a teacher has tried all she can and still feels her group of emergent readers is not making sufficient progress, she and her colleagues can return to the drawing board and switch up who works with which group to share the load.

What has been impact on students?

Melissa:  In our initial review of observations, teachers identified Melissa as a student who could benefit from intensive support in foundational skills and concepts about print. Flexible grouping allowed her to receive double the instruction she was receiving prior. With this extra attention, she made gains in these areas and  developed the confidence she needed to let her reading take off.

Ethan: At the start of flexible grouping, Ethan already had an impressive base of literacy abilities, especially in English, his native language. Teachers saw that, as a Spanish Language Learner (SLL), a good next step for Ethan would be to help him develop his oral language to be able to determine what would sound right and make sense while reading Spanish books. Ethan was grouped with both English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students to benefit from being in the presence of Spanish language models, and his Spanish oral language has blossomed! 

What has been impact on teachers?

Flexible grouping has been an empowering learning and teaming experience. Each teacher brings her respective strengths to the table, and together we have built our collective and individual capacity to deliver tailored literacy instruction to emerging bilingual students by working closely together to plan, reflect and adjust instruction. We share resources we have found helpful and have the opportunity to try them on with our student groups and then debrief at our planning meetings, exchanging tips for how to effectively employ the instructional tool and enhancing our repertoire of skills needed to carry out meaningful guided reading instruction. As Beeman and Urow (2013) remind us in Teaching for Biliteracy, teachers of bilingual learners “must provide them with text that is rich and interesting enough to be comprehended, and … prepare them to comprehend the text through concrete, comprehensible activities” (p. 91). The above resources have helped us choose appropriate, relevant texts and plan authentic introductions to orient our learners to the book and set them up for success. See this blog post for further reading.

Teaching for biliteracy is too difficult to do alone. We will provide kids what they need through great teaching and also through intentional differentiation. Perhaps the greatest impact of flexible grouping is that it has helped us further cultivate our commitment to the idea that all students are ours and to the shared responsibility we all feel for the success of each student.

About the Author:

Valerie Klessig-Palm is a bilingual kindergarten teacher in a dual language immersion program in Madison, WI. She holds degrees in Spanish, Journalism and Urban Education. Valerie grew up on a multi-generational family dairy farm in northeastern Wisconsin, where she had the privilege to work alongside several first-generation Latino immigrants. From a young age, she saw how the absence of strong bilingual education programs adversely affected immigrant youth in her community and was determined to work in a profession that helped all children embrace and develop bilingualism and multiculturalism. With these passions, bilingual education was a natural fit for her, and she feels fortunate to be part of a community of educational professionals working tirelessly to ensure our nation’s youth feel connected to and proud of their linguistic and cultural backgrounds