Master flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to challenge every learner, every day. Grouping learners purposefully throughout the school day based on their needs and the curriculum remains the single best way to differentiate instruction. This award-winning guide will help teachers expertly use flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to respond to students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests. Included are methods for creating groups based on assessment data, planning group lessons and tiered assignments, engaging learners at all levels, supporting personalized learning, grading collaborative work, and communicating with parents about the benefits of groupwork and productive struggle. Digital content contains all forms from the book and a PDF presentation. A free online PLC/Book Study Guide is available at freespirit.com/PLC.

Want to make your instruction more equitable and effective, more interesting, and more fun? It's time to try flexible grouping. Unlike traditional grouping, which typically puts like with like or combines students without regard to the best way to promote their individual growth, flexible grouping is both purposeful and fluid, regularly combining and recombining different students in different ways to pursue a wide range of academic and affective goals. In this comprehensive guide to flexible grouping, author Kristina J. Doubet shares a staged implementation approach that takes students from simple partner set-ups designed to build cooperative skills to complex structures ideal for interest and readiness-informed academic exploration. She covers the key factors to consider when forming groups and highlights how this approach to organizing learning can help you disrupt rigid tracking, deliver targeted instruction, connect to student interests, boost collaboration, and build community. Focused, practical, and written for teachers of all subjects and grade levels, The Flexibly Grouped Classroom provides * Dozens of strategies to expand your instructional repertoire, along with links to additional models and resources; * Guidance on setting the tone and expectations for group tasks, ideas for student role distribution, and tips for monitoring progress, noise, and time; * A planning template and sample grouping plans for an elementary and secondary classroom; and * Specific troubleshooting advice to help you navigate common complications. Choosing to make your classroom a flexibly grouped one means positioning every student to learn better—without feeling superior or inferior, without being overburdened or underchallenged—and to discover for themselves how much farther they can go together than they ever could alone.

Discover the basics of flexible grouping, including why organizing students into groups in a variety of ways can improve their learning, self-esteem, and interpersonal communication.

Co-Teaching in the Differentiated Classroom is a practical hands-on guide that explains how to implement co-teaching programs in mixed-ability classrooms. Based on the authors' award-winning model, this important guide shows how special education teachers can pair with general education teachers to improve classroom functioning while promoting high achievement for all students. The book provides tested frameworks and tools for teacher collaboration on lesson planning, student grouping, assessment, and discipline. It also offers guidance on managing overcrowded classrooms and on designing and implementing differentiated lessons and assignments, and includes advice for administrators.

When the barriers created by traditional instruction are removed, all students are capable of helping each other to learn and grow - regardless of their background or cognitive ability. With this practical resource, instructors will learn how to capitalize on students' individual differences and promote the academic and social growth of every learner in the inclusive classroom. A wealth of research-based teaching strategies, sample lesson plans, illustrative case studies, and hands-on instructional materials are provided to help educators meet their students' varying educational and psychological needs. Throughout this book, internationally recognized education experts detail the powerful strategies made possible by cooperative/collaborative learning and provide practical guidelines for adapting curricula and instructional methods, developing peer-mediated teaching systems, organizing peer mediation programs, facilitating friendships and peer connections, and enhancing creative thinking among students and colleagues. This fundamental reference will help educators, administrators, and classroom support personnel provide each student in the inclusive classroom with a quality education and the experience they need to build successful careers, communities, friendships, and families.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2014! Sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), this one-of-a-kind book demonstrates the best tools, resources, and techniques for discovering, selecting, and integrating interactive open educational resources (OERs) into the teaching and learning process. The author examines many of the best repositories and digital library websites for finding high quality materials, explaining in depth the best practices for effectively searching these repositories and the various methods for evaluating, selecting, and integrating the resources into the instructor’s curriculum and course assignments, as well as the institution’s learning management system.

Offers a definition of differentiated instruction, and provides principles and strategies designed to help teachers create learning environments that address the different learning styles, interests, and readiness levels found in a typical mixed-ability classroom.