The strategies used in multiage classrooms have the capacity to shift instruction in all classrooms because the focus is on individual academic growth within an effective classroom community.

In education, looping is defined as a continuous movement where a student has the same teacher for multiple years in a row. This strategy began in the 20th century by an Australian educator, Rudolf Steiner. This type of teaching was a success in Europe and was eventually called the Waldorf School Movement. This movement was founded on his reality…

Internationally, schools with small numbers of children and constrained funding are not able to group the children in classes based on their age. Rather, the children are combined into larger 'mixed-age' classes. Schools and teachers manage this situation in different ways, for example by teaching the class as two or more separate age-based groups…

Halifax Independent School is a small K-9 school where children learn in multi-age groups and in a setting where all the core subjects are integrated into the study of interesting themes such as Oceans, Nova Scotia, and Living Things. These themes last a whole year, involve the whole elementary school, and are designed to cover traditional subject…

English Language Learners, such as my Hutterian students, struggle to overcome a variety of learning barriers. I examined a variety of instructional methods to determine what would help them. The first aspect I explored was how English Language Learners acquire literacy skills. I also investigated how to expand my students' background knowledge.…

The practice of mixing grade levels in school settings is increasing (Nishida, 2009) and one third of classrooms worldwide already combine two or more grade levels (Cornish, 2006a). However, many teachers are assigned such mixed-grade groupings without training, and there is some evidence that this may be particularly true for art teachers…

In this article the author describes the "Derby Design Day" project--a project that paired high school honors physics students with second-grade children for a design challenge and competition. The overall project goals were to discover whether collaboration in a design process would: (1) increase an interest in science; (2) enhance the…

Maria Montessori envisioned an educational approach that could serve as a transformative agent for peaceful and positive change in the world; in fact, she dedicated her adult life to perfecting teaching methods and strategies congruent with that vision. Montessorians today continue to share that vision, but they also wrestle with modern realities.…

For a great portion of the history of the American education system, multiage education was the norm in one-room schoolhouses throughout the nation. The current graded, curriculum-centered approach in the U.S. appeared during the mid-nineteenth century with the rapid economic development and massive immigration into the country. Concurrently, some…

This article demonstrates how the use of creative movement and dance offers effective instructional strategies to meet the diverse learning needs of students in an inclusive classroom. Every day in one multi-age, fully inclusive classroom, students are meaningfully engaged in learning through movement--they move to learn science, social studies,…

In Kathleen Loomis's preschool classroom at the Bennington College Early Childhood Center, the goal for children is not to produce beautiful and expressive artworks or to learn specific methods of working with art media--although those things do happen. Here, the curriculum is built around the philosophy that learning to think and create with art…

Describes the mixed-age group implementation of the Everyday Mathematics program, which contains many open-ended components that are easily adaptable to the developmental nature of the mixed-age setting. Notes that students can benefit from games, explorations, projects, math messages, and math boxes in mixed-age settings. Team-teaching is used…

One of the most absurd vestiges of yesteryear in the public schools is the widely accepted practice of moving students to different teachers and grade levels every year, leading to an annual mix of new classmates and instructional methodologies. No respectable body of research or scholarly reflection today gives any credibility to the academic and…

Discusses a study using non-participant observations, survey, and interview techniques to examine student participation in a mixed age, small, midwestern university classroom. States that once student responsibilities were identified, comparisons and contrasts were made among students who accepted the participation responsibility and those who…

This study is the third annual study of primary program implementation in Kentucky elementary schools. This research project is one of six studies conducted in 1995 to determine the extent Kentucky schools and educators had implemented educational technology. In June, 1990, the Kentucky legislature passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA),…