What Is Flexible Grouping?

Flexible grouping is a highly effective strategy for creating an inclusive classroom culture that honors learner variability. Use data to put students into small groups for instruction. Your groups should change frequently in response to the lesson outcome and student needs. Students can be grouped at the same skill level or with varying skill levels.

Flexible grouping will be a key classroom practice when you return to in-person learning. Flexible grouping can support accelerated learning and address foundational skill needs. It also increases your students’ engagement and supports their social-emotional needs. 

Flexible grouping supports students with disabilities — the 1 in 5. It helps students get the right support, in the right way, at the right time. You can deliver individual support and intervention within the general education classroom, rather than removing students. When flexible grouping is an expected routine for all students, it reduces the stigma the 1 in 5 can experience from working more frequently with the teacher. When used for collaborative learning activities, flexible grouping supports the 1 in 5 in using their assets.

Why Flexible Grouping Meets the Needs of the Post-COVID-19 Classroom

This spring, NCLD and Boston University’s CERES Institute surveyed over 2,400 teachers. We asked about their perceptions and feelings on the school year and how their students handled learning during the pandemic, particularly those with learning and attention challenges. We heard feedback on lessons learned throughout the pandemic, including what teachers want to keep for next year and what they hope would change.

How to Implement Flexible Grouping

As you return to in-person learning, use peer collaboration and small group instruction to meet academic and social-emotional needs. Try these moves to implement flexible grouping in your classroom.

Go-To Teacher Moves in Any Setting	Additional Considerations for Hybrid Settings
Identify your learning outcome. The objective will inform the group size and make-up.	Group students according to their location. Keep virtual students together and in-person students together.
Determine student needs using data appropriate for the task. What student skills will be required for the task? Can you group students to complement skill levels and needs? How can the task use student interests to maximize engagement?	Consider student personalities. Aim for a balance of introverts and extroverts.
Set group norms with your students.	Modify group norms for virtual students. For example, when can students use the chat?
Practice routines and transitions to and from flexible grouping locations.	Set expectations for virtual transitions too. For example, how long does a student have to join a breakout room?
Provide the whole group explicit instruction to present key vocabulary and engage background knowledge.	Provide the whole group explicit instruction on the use of technology.
Reduce social anxiety. Provide your students the steps needed to complete a task, one step at a time. Assign roles to students like a reader and a recorder. Use sentence stems.	Build in extra time for an icebreaker. Give students individual thinking time. Use the chat to share initial ideas to start the conversation.
Check for understanding of the learning activity, at each step. Provide immediate feedback.	Create multiple breakout rooms so you can “move” from group to group easily.
Debrief by asking students how the learning experience was and how to improve.	Use a Jamboard, Google Doc, or Kudoboard to capture feedback from students.

Progress Monitoring Is the Key to Effective Flexible Grouping

A key element to flexible grouping is collecting, analyzing, and responding to student data. Meaningful progress monitoring is even more important as schools emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic. Without effective progress monitoring, you run the risk of misunderstanding where challenges lie and potentially inappropriately referring students for special education.

Ongoing progress monitoring helps identify students who need individualized support. Progress monitoring can also ensure that students in an accelerated learning environment are mastering content. If students are not on track, progress monitoring identifies who needs timely intervention. 

When implementing flexible grouping, be aware that groups — or students — might present their learning differently. You should consider multiple ways to determine if students mastered the task. This flexibility in assessment is critical to determining if the 1 in 5 mastered a task or skill. Consider using rubrics to provide a consistent method for assessing students when providing flexibility in the ways they can demonstrate those skills.

Learn More

Flexible Grouping: What You Need to Know (Understood)

A research-backed, expert-vetted, and classroom teacher-reviewed article on flexible grouping, including additional ideas for implementing the strategy and applying the practice to distance learning.

Distance Learning Toolkit: Key Practices to Support Students Who Learn Differently (Understood)

A toolkit to help educators meet the needs of all students during distance learning. It includes additional ideas for implementing flexible grouping.

High-Leverage Practice: Establish a Consistent, Organized, and Respectful Learning Environment (Council for Exceptional Children)

A 20-minute video designed to augment professional learning for establishing a consistent, organized, and respectful learning environment. The video:

• Describes important steps
• Shows how a variety of teachers implement the practice with all students, not just students with learning and attention issues

Differentiated Instruction: Maximizing the Learning of All Students (IRIS Center)

Three-hour interactive, multimedia learning module for educators. Topics include:

• Understanding the key elements of differentiated instruction
• Differentiating instruction based on students’ readiness level, interests, and learning needs
• Differentiating instruction for three main instructional components: content, process, and product
• Evaluating and grading differentiated products
• Preparing students and classrooms for differentiated instruction

Ability Grouping, Tracking and Grouping Alternatives (Learning for Justice)

Five-minute video in which experts discuss the history, practice, and perils of grouping students for classroom instruction according to their perceived abilities, as well as alternatives.

Acknowledgments

Author: Lindsay DeHartchuck, M.A.
Expert Reviewers: George M. Batsche, Ed.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D.
Teacher Contributor: Julian Saavedra, M.A.