My Research on Ability Grouping in Reading Classrooms

I'm putting the final touches on some ethnographic research I've been conducting this semester in conjunction with a doctoral class. The study was about the effects of ability grouping in reading on students self-perception and teacher curricular choice. The study has been very interesting and eye opening.

Of course I went into the study with pre-conceived notions about homogeneous groupings for reading. I currently teach a "high" reading group, while there is also a "medium" and "low" group. I am not a fan of the format, but because that's the way it is at my school, I of course go with the flow and make the best of it.

My study has taught me quite about about how fully aware of levels the students how, how they view themselves, and how they are either more or less motivated depending on where they are and if they think they can do something to move up a level (for those in the lower levels).

Also, as part of this study, I took a look at teacher curricular choices depending upon group level taught. Again I've learned quite a bit. It's obvious that the "high" groups in many cases feel more freedom in terms of what books they choose (for example in my own experience, I've read books this year such as The Lightning Thief, The House of the Scorpion, and The Little Prince, among others), how they approach the work load and how students are motivated from a teacher perspective.

I will be submitting my final paper next week, not for publishing but for grading (welcome to grad school). I will hopefully be posting it here on the blog shortly thereafter to great fanfare!

The Reading Class: A How To

I recently realized something as I was teaching my 5th graders during reading class. I realized that my class structure has become truly unique. I realized that my structure no longer follows the district guidelines (although it is still within what the district wants, it is not a clone), it no longer follows traditional thought, and it no longer follows what anyone else in the building does.

The teaching of reading in elementary school is basically broken into three components: teacher led reading (read aloud, shared, or modeled reading depending on the jargon where you work), group reading, and individual reading. Activities that are done in reading fall within one of these three areas.

My students enjoy teacher led reading immensely, they beg for more. The reason for this is the lack of textbooks, more often than not called "basal readers," which are books of story excerpts. Some of the excerpts are from great stories, so early in my career, I began to question this by saying that if the story was so good, shouldn't we read the whole thing? Isn't that part of the experience? My quest for the authentic literacy experience led me to where I am now.

For the first 30 minutes of each reading class (which run for 90 minutes, within my currently self contained classroom), I read to my students. I read to them from books that are basically above the reading level of 75% of the class, but not substantially above their level. I have read books like "The Castle in the Attic," "The City of Ember," "Coraline," and "The Giver," all books that I have read personally and consider to be masterpieces of children's literature. It is important that the teacher is familiar with the books before reading them out loud, don't just pick one because I or somebody else recommended it and start reading it. I am comfortable reading "The Giver," but somebody else might find it outside of their comfort zone, so be knowledgeable first.

After that 30 minutes is over, students work in groups for 30 minutes, reading a book that they selected together, or working on a project that I have given them. This block is where students are actually ability grouped and rotate between "stations," this is in following the Guided Reading model that my school district has mandated. This is another rule of reading. If your school district tells you to do something, do it, but make it work. Don't just say "I'm not doing that." In their groups, one of the big things I have going on is computer work. Students complete various projects on the computers during group.

At the end of group, there is 30 minutes of individual work. The activity most often done and preferred in individual time is sustained silent reading. Students love self choice, they love the joy that comes with a good book, and they love the time to themselves after a long day of lectures, group work, discussion, experimenting, and everything else that makes the school day so great. I guess I should say that my reading is taught at the end of the day (not my choice, but that's the way it goes).

So that's just a quick overview. I'll be back during the week with more book reviews, more ideas, and more discussion. Please check back soon.

The Pluses of Homogeneous Grouping

Homogeneous (pronounced either ha-mah-ga-nus or homo-genius, depending on who you are) grouping involves putting students of a similar skill level together, either in a group setting within a class, or in a class setting. Some teachers, a lot of times those who are self-contained (don't send their students out for any subjects), are faced with the choice of whether or not to ability group their students. If you work in a larger school, with many classrooms per grade level, you may have been faced with the possibility of grouping students for a subject by level and sending them, by those levels, to a certain classroom (this is also sometimes referred to as departmentalizing).

Homogeneous grouping can cause some issues, especially if you somehow become the teacher who is asked to take the 'low' group every time, but there are pluses. If you have a large class like me, and you are self-contained, like me, then you have to either teach whole group, small group, or a combination of both.

Since this blog is focused mainly around literacy, let's look at it from there. I've posted previously on how I run my reading class, and some suggestions on how to set up a reading class (that post was titled Reading Instruction: The Basics), but basically, I do some whole group stuff with the class, read aloud and the discussion that usually follows, as well as the activities that go with that book. I do that with all students, regardless of level, this could either be referred to as whole group or even heterogeneous grouping, although a more appropriate definition of heterogeneous grouping would involve their application in smaller groups. Then, they split off into their ability, or homogeneous, groups, and have work to do there.

The most obvious advantage of similarly skilled students working together is that you can focus them on texts that are appropriate for their ability. Why put the student reading on a 10th grade level in small group with the student reading on a 2nd grade level? Well, there are pluses for doing that, including having good modeling and a reciprocal relationship in the group, but there is also pluses of keeping them apart in small group.

A lot of it comes down to book choice. I would want to challenge my advanced student, and not frustrate my struggling student, so homogeneous grouping would be appropriate to steer clear of this conflict.

This blog is still rather new at this point, but I do have some long-term goals, especially as I gain readers, which has been happening very slowly so far, as I'm still getting embedded into Google and teacher blog sites, and things like that. However, I will be posting more on this topic, as well as its counterpart, both pros and cons. But for now, this is a good starting point.