Unit Six: Managing a Multigrade Classroom

A. Understanding the Current Context and Creating a Future Vision

B. Preparing the Classroom
C. Organizing Groups and Activities
D. Being Efficient and Flexible in the Use of Time
E. Using Positive Discipline

Managing a Multigrade Classroom

Multigrade teaching is all about classroom organization, student management, and,
ultimately, the successful transmission of grade specific curricula. It is your responsibility as a multigrade
teacher to plan and organize your classroom to get the best results from the space and resources available
to you. Management of a multigrade classroom revolves around three dimensions as depicted in Figure
1.

Figure 1: Three Dimensions of Classroom Management

Teacher

Three Dimensions of Classroom Management

Teacher Classroom Students

• Planning • Physical conditions • Time on task
• Classroom control • Materials • Behaviour
• Use of time • Activities • Relationships
• Delegation of responsibility • Routines • Responsibilities

As a multigrade teacher, you are the key to planning, designing, and managing a range of
both grade-appropriate and mixed-grade activities for children to keep them engaged in learning. Your
efficiency and effectiveness rest on creating a classroom conducive to learning by developing exciting and
stimulating activities ranging from group work to independent study. You play a central role in managing
the classroom in the following ways:

 planning the use of the classroom “space”, especially flexible

 seating arrangements for both you and your students
 planning and carrying out multiple lessons at the same time
 designing activities for students to keep them involved
 creating, arranging, and using teaching and learning materials establishing norms of behaviour
expected of students to keep them learning
Understanding the Current Context and Creatinga Future Vision
In order to realize these functions effectively, you need to focus on many levels of classroom
management. This starts with an assessment of what your classroom looks like now and your vision of how you want
it to look in the future.

When you first get assigned to a school which has or should have multigrade teaching, it is essential to
take time to gain a clear understanding of the context of your multigrade classroom. You can start by asking
yourself the following questions:
 Where is your school located? How far do your students travel to get to school?
 What grades are you teaching? What age and ability range is in your classroom? How might you best work
with and take advantage of a wide range of ages and abilities?
 What kinds of family background do your students come from?
 What is their economic status?
 What language do your students speak at home? How well do they understand and speak the national
language? What might you do to ensure they learn what they need to learn in the language you use in the
classroom?
 How many have had some kind of pre-school experience? What can you do to help those who have not had
this experience?
 Do any of your students have special education needs in regard to physical or cognitive disabilities? What
can you do to respond to these needs?
 What resources do you have to make the classroom and school work better?
 According to the national (and perhaps local) curriculum, what should be taught to each grade and how well
have y our students learned the curriculum so far?
 To what extent do your head teacher/principal and the other teachers in your school understand and practice
multigrade teaching? If their understanding is limited, what can y ou do to increase support for your work?
 Do the parents of your children understand and support multigrade teaching? Again, if not, what can you do
to help them understand the need for such teaching?

Once you have a good understanding of the students in y our class, take time to create a vision in your
mind about what you want your multigrade classroom to look like.
 A welcoming, inclusive, healthy, protective, and child-friendly environment which helps your students – most
of whom have probably not had any pre-school experience – feel comfortable in the school and ensures that
they do not drop out before completion of the primary school cycle
 A rich mixture of grade-appropriate and mixed-grade teaching, peer learning through group work and pair
work, personalized teaching, independent learning through tutoring, and teacher and student interactions to
make sure that all children learn and that no child is excluded from learning because of gender, language,
poverty, disability, or any other reason
 A disciplined classroom with a harmonious learning environment which mixes structured learning (e.g. for
teaching science, arithmetic, reading, writing) and unstructured learning (storytelling, singing, plays, games,
etc.)
Preparing the Classroom
Once you have created your vision, you can start translating it into practice by planning what you want
to do in clear and simple terms. A crucial part of planning an effective multigrade classroom is organizing its space so
that it allows free movement and can be used for different activities by individual students, individual grades, small
groups, and the whole group. The traditional seating arrangement with a teacher facing all students in rows with a
chalkboard on the wall does not work in a multigrade classroom where several activities are happening at the same
time. Therefore, you will need to think about how y our classroom can be divided into different areas. The key word in
this process is “flexibility” – the ability to move students and desks around inside the classroom to create the kind of
learning spaces you desire.

This requires some preparation before you start teaching, such as:
 Understanding the space in the classroom and the resources available for conducting classes
 Deciding on the types of teaching methods and student activities possible in the space available given the
number of students and grades in your classroom; e.g. if a lot of group work is planned, you may want to
create several areas for group discussion/activity and leave less space for one-on-one teaching and
independent learning
 Drawing a floor plan of the classroom with a seating plan that promotes your desired learning activities and
shows the placement of furniture, books, materials, etc. (see Figure 2); think about how you can create spaces
for individual and group learning in such a way that students experience barrier-free access to the most used
areas within the classroom as well as to classroom resources and materials
Figure 2: Example Floor Plan for a Multigrade Classroom

Source: Adapted from a figure published by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (1999), The
Multigrade Classroom: A Resource Handbook for Small, Rural Schools . Portland, USA, available from
http://educationnorthwest.org/webfm_send/1151 (Accessed 17 December 2012.)

Figure 2 shows one way you could arrange your classroom for effective multigrade teaching. You can
adapt this floor plan to suit your classroom set-up and resources

Forming groups
Part of managing the Multigrade classroom is to know what sort of groups you want for a
particular activity and how to create those groups to achieve your objectives. In the Multigrade classroom,
groups will be changing according to the needs of the students. Groups will need to be formed and re-formed,
and students should not always remain in the same group all the time.

The membership of groups should change according to the needs of the students and
type of activities being completed.

Size of groups
Ideally, groups of three or four students are suitable for most activities. This provides enough
people to ensure a range of opinion and experience, and allows time for everyone to participate. If you have
large numbers in your class, sometimes you may need to have fewer groups with a greater number in each
group. At other times, you may have many small groups. Sometimes pairs are the most suitable grouping for
some activities.

Forming groups
· Random groups
· Interest based groups
· Ability groups
· Grade groups
· Cross age tutoring groups
· Mixed age groups
· Friendship groups

Which grouping should I use?

Random groups
Random groups are desirable in the Multigrade classroom to enable students of differing
ability levels and ages to work together. These groupings are good for discussing, sharing information, and
completing tasks that are suitable for the whole group, e.g. a thematic health activity. In these random groups
you should have a mix of ability, gender, cultural groups, etc. You need a system to randomly assign students
to groups. If you just ask students to make five groups, what do think will happen? Try it one time and you
will see.
After you have decided on the group size, the simplest random grouping method is to ask
students to count off to the number of groups required to create the size of group you want.
For example, 24 students in the class, you want four students per group, so divide 24 by four. Ask students
to count off to 6. e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 …
When they all have a number, ask students with the same number to gather together in a
part of the roomindicated by you. If you count off when students are already seated, they may be reluctant to
get up and move to a new seat. What you can do is use a method to send them to a small group as they
enter the room.
· You could hand out puzzle pieces, differently shaped or coloured cards etc which have
been planned beforehand to form the number of groups you want, e.g. four red, four yellow, four purple.

Other ideas for random grouping include

· Tell students to line up (without talking) according to month and day of their birthday, or to
line up alphabetically, and then divide the line into the desired number of groups, sending each team to a
designated area. Random formation of groups avoids feelings of having been selectively placed in a particular
group, and if you make it clear that group size and membership will be changed around regularly, the wish
to work with friends won’t be so important. Once students start to work on the task, the discomfort of working
with a ‘stranger’ fades.
Interest based groups
When each group is about to work on a different topic within a theme, you may wish to give
the students a chance to choose the one of most interest to them. With the furniture arranged for small group
work (desks turned around to face each other, or a mat area marked out) place pictures, descriptions of the
activity, or topic headings at each set of tables or area on the floor. Students walk in a line past all the activities
to have a look. Put the class in the middle of the room or outside and ask them to write down their first and
second choice, and then ask them to move to the selected topic. If there are too many people in one area,
form two groups, or ask some to make a second choice. If there are too few, ask them to move to a second
choice.
Ability groups
There will be times when you require students to work in ability groups. This may commonly
occur during language and maths lessons, or where the group work is clearly structured around particular
objectives. Ability groups allow students to work on tasks most suited to their learning needs. In the Multigrade
4/5 classroom, you may have some Grade 4s and some Grade 5s in each of three ability groups, depending
on their level of understanding. You may have some very capable Grade 4 students working in the most
challenging Maths group, and you may have Grade 5 students in the group with less challenging outcomes.
Grouping students according to ability must be done by the teacher, who has a clear understanding of the
individual student’s capabilities in a particular area. The teacher needs to collect information on the student’s
abilities in the area in order to make an informed decision. Observation, the results of previous tests, and
analysis of work samples would help the teacher to place the student in the correct group. It will take the first
few weeks of the school year to gather this information, so at first, it may be best to group students in other
ways, (e.g., grade groups) until you can see who is coping well and who requires further assistance.
Grade groups
At times in the Multigrade class, your grouping might be based on the grade levels you are
teaching, e.g., you may have a 4/5/6 Multigrade, and if using an activity where students are working in their
grade levels, you would have three groups. These could be uneven due to the numbers in each grade. If you
have specific objectives for each grade in a particular activity, you could use this method of grouping.
Cross age tutoring groups
In the Multigrade classroom, you can take advantage of the range of abilities to assist you
with your teaching. Using older students to assist younger students provides benefits to both. The older
students reinforce their learning by having to explain to the younger student. The younger student is
supported in their learning by the older class member. Once again, students need to be taught how to do
this. The older students need guidelines for assistance. You don’t want them doing the work or giving all the
answers to the younger student, so the teacher must be clear on what is required from the tutor. If you spend
a little time outlining the tutoring task, it will save time later and make these group sessions more effective.
Reading aloud is a common cross age tutoring activity. It allows one-to-one teaching, and the older student
can assist with difficult words as well as being a role model.
Mixed age groups
In the Multigrade class, this will probably occur in all grouping structures. If you have a wide
range of classes, or combinations such as a 3/5/6, then mixed age groups will be a natural part of your
program. As with the cross age tutoring, there are advantages in having a range of ages in the group.
Friendship groups
Asking students to form their own groups will not result in mixed racial, cultural background
or ability groups. It tends to separate the boys and girls. It can also be damaging to some students’ self –
confidence. Some students are shown to be unwanted and some are self conscious about approaching
others. Friendship groups have been shown to not perform as well as other group combinations. They are
not as task oriented. Once students realize that they will be changing groups often, their desire to work with
their friends will not create a problem.
Being Efficient and Flexible in the Use of Time
It is important to make the best use of time available when involving students in different activities. The
choice and organization of activities are essential conditions for good multigrade classroom management. You should
also have a clear idea about how to divide y our students by both grade and age levels, and what types of activities
are best for different groups. This will help you plan activities which suit multigrade situations.

For example:

Grades 1 and 2 may need more teacher support in addition to aids such as posters, charts and art work
appropriate to their age; this is especially true for children who have not h ad any preschool experience.
They also need to gain a firm foundation in early literacy and numeracy, and students who have difficulty
in these skills need extra help.

Grades 3 and 4 may need more peer tutoring along with instructional guides and dictionaries to help
them through their more complicated curriculum and ensure they continue their mastery of basic skills.

Grade 5 and 6 require considerable teacher support and monitored independent study in addition to
problem-solving exercises. This is especially true if there is an examination at the end of primary school
that determines whether they successfully complete that level and/or can enter secondary school.

To assist you in your teaching, it is often useful to delegate some classroom responsibilities to students
as class leaders, peer tutors, and helpers for your activities. These assignments can be changed regularly so that all
students have some role to play depending on their particular abilities and skills. A job chart listing assignments with
the name of the responsible student can be useful in this process. The selected students need to be oriented and
guided on how to lead groups and help their classmates, ensure all group members participate in the assigned activity,
discourage bullying, and help maintain harmonious relationships among students. These arrangements aim to enable
the members of each group to learn together and share the results of their work with you, other groups, and other
grades.

Scheduling Activities and Delegating Responsibilities

In order to meet the learning needs of all students at different levels, you will need to schedule activities
carefully, including cross-age tutoring. You can introduce key concepts to all students and then create individualized
activities for the different grade and/or ability levels in the classroom.

For example, in a lesson on telling time, you could make cardboard clock faces with your students. Start
by explaining how hours and minutes work to the whole class. Your youngest students can then draw hands on the
clock faces to represent different times while you give a more detailed activity to older students – perhaps asking them
to write out a diary of their day and showing what time they do each task with a drawing of a clock face.

Reading, spelling , and arithmetic can also be handled in this manner. Other subjects can be taught as
a whole group with each student working at his or her particular level; art, social science, science, and music are
frequently handled in this way. Your students might also work together to complete tasks while you meet students
individually. You can give older or more able students extra responsibility to help with this.

For example, one student could act as librarian each week and read a story to younger children while
you work with the older students. During special occasions such as celebrations or festivals which involve the entire
school, all the students can work together so that a gif ted second grader, for example, can work with a fourth grader
or slower students can work with younger students for special skills. And because multigrade schools are often isolated
and serve as the centre of the community , parents can also be given some responsibility – why not ask them to help
arrange field trips and special programmes or even assist in the classroom?
 Since there are many tasks to be performed during the course of a school day, time flexibility must be a
norm for a multigrade classroom. But remember that as the context changes, y our strategies for utilizing time to teach
a particular concept or theme may also need to change.

Using Positive Discipline

Putting students of more than one grade togeth er in one classroom already has limited space can
sometimes create problems. You must therefore plan your classroom activities keeping in mind the need to prevent
too much disruption. Establishing norms of student behaviour in the beginning can go a long way towards solving this
problem. To create an environment of positive discipline in the classroom, and to make sure you never use any kind of
physical, corporal punishment, you can:

 Use the first week of school to familiarize your students with their new (or improved) multigrade environment
– assign responsibilities for tasks to be carried out, show them the different spaces for each activity, involve
them in arranging the classroom and keeping things organized, and have them practice moving the classroom
furniture and resources (and themselves!) around the room as needed for the different parts of the school
day.

 Ask your students to discuss in groups the rules they follow at home and at school, have the groups report
back to the whole class what rules they have in common, and then write some of these up on the board.
Students then vote for their top six rules, and you can use these as the basis of y our class’s code of conduct.

 Decide on consequences for students who follow or do not follow instructions. Special praise for students
showing desired social skills and good behaviour and other kinds of positive feedback work well to produce
positive energy among students. You should be observant and supportive when any child shows inappropriate
behaviour and also help students understand that such behavior is not tolerated and that there are certain
rules governing discipline that need always to be followed.

 Help children working in smaller groups to understand what behaviour you expect during group activities –
taking turns, encouraging all group members to contribute, etc.

 Specify the rules to be followed for each space - for example, if you have created a reading corner, explain to
y our students that they must be quiet and not talk wh en they are in that space.

 Demonstrate a code of conduct to students not only through direct instruction but also by modelling good
behaviour yourself.

Demonstrating Sensitivity to Each Student’s

Uniqueness

Not all students are the same and like all teachers y ou must be aware of and respond to their
differences. Many factors make every child unique and different both in how they best learn and what they can learn.
Students in multigrade schools generally live in rural, remote, and sparsely populated areas. Their families may be
very poor, and they may be living in home conditions not conducive to study . They may also speak a language at
home different from that in the school, and some may have special education needs related to stunting due to
malnutrition, impaired vision and hearing, and other physical or cognitive disabilities. In addition, in some settings girls
may be more disadvantaged than boys in terms of work in the home and parental expectations, while in other settings
boys are less likely to attend school.
 The educational background of parents also enhances or decreases the interest of their children in
learning at school. Studies have shown that parents’ education, and mothers’ education in particular, makes a
difference in the enrolment, retention, and learning achievement of a child. It is therefore important for you as a
multigrade teacher to understand the family and individual backgrounds of each of your students and manage the
resulting differences in their interest and ability to learn. Figure 3 demonstrates the factors affecting the motivation and
ability of a child to learn.

Figure 3: Factors Affecting Children’s Learning

You can respond to the different backgrounds and abilities of individual students in several ways:

 ensure that your classroom is genuinely inclusive by welcoming all children regardless of their gender, socio-
economic status, ability, and language/ethnicity

 personalize the content you deliver and the methods you use to the individual backgrounds and needs of each
of y our students and be especially sensitive to early signs of disinterest or faltering’
  help new students, especially those who have not been to a preschool, to overcome the fear, anxiety, and
nervousness that they often have when they enter school••make an effort to get to know your students so that
you understand their living conditions, family backgrounds, and the expectations they hold for the school.
Reinforce this in conversations with their families and visits to their homes; such information can help you find
the best possible ways to manage your classroom and shape an environment that facilitates learning for all –
your principal aim as a multigrade teacher

 promote classroom interactions across ages, grades, and ability levels – and between boys and girls – in
order to stimulate cognitive development, improve language skills, and enhance vocabulary.

This last point is especially important. In many multigrade contexts, girls may be relatively
disadvantaged in education compared to boys. It is therefore important first to get girls enrolled in school and then to
participate and achieve equally with boys. You can encourage girls to take part in classroom activities (sometime in
groups with other girls, sometimes in groups with boys) by having the same expectations of success for them as you
do for boys, and ensuring they have an equal opportunity to ask and answer questions in class and to takeresponsibility
for classroom affairs.