Planning for Multi-Grade Level Instruction

One of the hardest things for me to figure out as a special education teacher was how to plan reading for my special education classroom that served multi-level and multi-grade level students in one setting. I recall my first two years, spending countless evenings wrapping my head around how to meet the needs of all of my students, providing them access to their grade level curriculum all while maximizing the time I spent planning lessons. It felt impossible and like a never-ending process that became increasingly frustrating as more students were added to my caseload or as the abilities across grade levels varied greatly. It's hard enough to plan and accommodate for one grade-level let alone many grade levels with a variety of skill levels, academic needs and behavioral challenges that impact learning. So how can you do plan the most effectively while still creating rich academic content and meeting student's academic and behavioral needs?

As I've progressed through the years, I've decided that the process for planning my lessons needed to be streamlined. I wanted a predictable pattern of lesson planning for myself and my students. I learned that predictability creates stability which can benefit students with behavioral needs and benefits the efficiency of me planning lessons.

So how do I do it? Through this blog, I'll walk you through the process that works for me and where I've found success while planning for multi-grade level and multi-level reading instruction.

First, I begin by sorting my students into levels. I color-coordinate my levels for easier organization later on (trust me, coloring your levels/abilities is the best thing you can do for yourself). I assess my students for their guided reading level (A-Z) and their lexile levels. This also helps me to pinpoint what kind of resources I'll need or how I'll accommodate for each student. After assessing my students, often I'll sort into different grade levels as well as grade levels based on abilities. Looking at the following picture I have 4 groups. My orange level was my second grade reading group, the yellow level was my second grade reading group that was below grade level, my green level was the third grade group and my purple level was my fourth grade group. Obviously my groups vary from year to year, but this shows an example of how I had 2 groups that had the same grade level, but one was a below grade-level group. This helped me to plan better for them and create/accommodate more meaningful and appropriate resources.

Picture here, I keep a visual of my reading groups (teachers need visuals too!) and just write the student's names on post it notes when I add them to a group, adjust a group or need to move them around!

Once I've sorted my students into their colored groups, I create a planning template for each group. I use the grade-level curriculum provided by my school to create a template for each group and find ways I can streamline similar skills for the same days of the week. For example, on Mondays everyone reads their story of the week required in the curriculum for their grade level. Tuesdays are fluency, Wednesdays are IEP goal work and guided reading day, Thursdays are phonics and comprehension skill day and Fridays are test day! For the longest time, I sporadically had each grade level working on something different each day of the week and it was so confusing to plan for and it's hard to get into a rhythm when running multi-grade level reading stations. I use this same format each week, which saves time while planning since I know exactly what each grade level is doing for each day.

Here are what my planning templates look like! I create these and keep them in a binder to reference each week for the whole year. It's a great visual reminder about what each group needs for each week or what skill they are working on for the day. This planning template doesn't necessarily tell me what resource to use, but just reminds me of the skill that group is to be working on. The longer I plan, the more familiar I become with the resources I pull to support those skills!

When working on the same skill each day, this makes it easier to share appropriate resources across grade levels. For example, if I have students in my third and fourth grade reading groups that have about the same guided reading level, then on Wednesday when I plan for guided reading I can share the same resource across those groups. Or when I'm planning on Thursday for my comprehension day, I purchase or seek out resources that focus on comprehension that has a multitude of levels that would encompass all of my students. Then I'm printing from one document at different levels, as opposed to pulling a multitude of resources to print from. When I'm search for supplemental resources outside of the curriculum, I look for products that cover the same skill across a variety of levels. For example, if I know all of my student's reading A-Z levels, I will search for comprehension sheets that encompass all of the levels present in my class. Or if I need a variety of supplemental activities for phonics skills, I may search for phonics poems that have a variety of phonics focuses so I can have the same sheet for each student, but the phonics skill focus they need. These are small adjustments that are time-savers when working on lesson plans. Time is of the essence when planning!

Once I've created my planning templates for each group, then the weekly planning can begin! I feel better writing my lesson plans down on a rough draft, before transferring the plans to my online platform (I use planbook). However, if you don't feel the need to create a rough draft of plans then you can skip this step all together. The lesson planning template I make for each of my groups for the whole year, is what I use as my rough draft template. I print out the template in black and white form each week. Then as I plan, I reference my planning template I created for the whole year to figure out what skills to work on and write down exactly what work the students are doing for each day of the week. Once I have my week planned out, I transfer the plans to planbook to print out!

The blank template in the picture is what I write on each week when planning! I have two stations to plan for, teacher and aide station. I have a box for each group and briefly write notes in the box with more detail lesson plans such as worksheet name, page numbers or book names! I do this step before transferring to planbook (an online lesson planning platform). I do better with writing out my ideas and thoughts. This step could realistically be skipped altogether!

One tip I learned along the way as I planned is that I plan one grade level/group at a time. For example, I plan and print all of my work for my orange group. Then my yellow and continue until all my groups are done. This is also a time saver in the sense that whenever I print one level of groups I know the whole stack I just printed is for that group only. Once I have my stack of my group printed, I go through and put a dot or mark in the top right hand corner to match the group color.

This system of color-coding papers and groups helps alleviate the stress of trying to find what work goes with what students and helps my instructional assistants be able to go to my reading folder and easily pull out the work for the station rotation that day!

I then sort all of the work for each day of the week Monday - Friday. I put all the worksheets that correspond with Monday's plans in a pile and continue through the whole week until all the papers have been distributed. I then store the plans in my labeled binder clips and keep in a drawer for storage until next week.

You're probably wondering why I put the papers in stacks for each day of the week? Well, there is a method to my organizational madness. On Friday's when I'm ready to pull all my plans out for the following week, I pull out the stack of plans in the Monday-Friday binder clips. I then have a folder system where each set of plans for each subject (reading, writing, math, social skills) has it's own folder that anyone can pull out when it's time set up stations for the day. I pull out the folders for reading for the week and just unclip the work and stuff into the folder! I do this for all the subjects and place back into the rolling cart. Being a self-contained teacher in a behavior support classroom means sometimes things get destroyed. This rolling cart and folder system has saved the many times where my lesson plans could have been destroyed, but they were not. Whenever behaviors are beginning to escalate, I just put everything back in the folder and into the rolling cart. Then I can roll the cart out of the classroom if I need!

Finally binder clipping all of my lesson plans once I'm done planning them is a different feeling of accomplished for me!

Another great part about my lesson planning system, is anyone on my team can pull the folders for the subjects and set up stations. This helps if I'm busy or dealing with a deescalation I can focus on that and allow my team to continue to run my stations. My reading stations are displayed on the screen and each student's name is color coordinated to their group. This is another way it makes it easier for my instructional assistants to remember what students are in each group. Once the student comes to their station, they just look up to see what color their name is shaded in on the daily schedule screen and pull that group work from the folder that has been colored with the appropriate colored dot.

There is no right way to plan for multi-grade level and multi-level instruction in a special education classroom. Realistically, you need to develop a system that works for YOU and exposing your students to the content they need to progress academically and within their curriculums. As I previously said, the goal of planning lessons for me came back to being streamlined. I wanted an organized, predictable way to plan that didn't leave me overwhelmed each and every week. As much as setting up my planning templates may have taken more time in the beginning, it is saving me more time in the long run as I plan weekly. And as a teacher, we all know time is of the essence.