A Teacher's Guide to Flexible Grouping and Collaborative Learning: Form, Manage, Assess, and Differentiate in Groups

by Dina Brulles, Karen L. Brown

Overview

Master flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to challenge every learner, every day.

Grouping learners purposefully throughout the school day based on their needs and the curriculum remains the single best way to differentiate instruction. This award-winning guide will help teachers expertly use flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to respond to students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests. Included are methods for creating groups based on assessment data, planning group lessons and tiered assignments, engaging learners at all levels, supporting personalized learning, grading collaborative work, and communicating with parents about the benefits of groupwork and productive struggle. Digital content contains all forms from the book and a PDF presentation. A free online PLC/Book Study Guide is available at freespirit.com/PLC.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631982835
Publisher:	Free Spirit Publishing
Publication date:	03/05/2018
Series:	Free Spirit Professional®
Edition description:	First Edition, Book with Digital Content
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	8.30(w) x 18.20(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	5 - 17 Years

About the Author

Dina Brulles, Ph.D., is the gifted program coordinator at Arizona State University and the former director of gifted education at Paradise Valley Unified School District in Arizona. She recently served as NAGC’s Governance Secretary and also as the board’s school district representative.

Dina received the prestigious 2022 NAGC Ann F. Isaacs Founder’s Memorial Award. She was also the recipient of the 2019 and the 2020 NAGC Book of the Year Award (for practitioners), NAGC’s inaugural 2014 Gifted Coordinator Award, and the Professional Development Network Award in 2013.

Dina has actively supported and served as a mentor for the Javits Frasier Scholarship Program since 2010. Dr. Brulles’ work emphasizes and encourages equitable and inclusive identification practices and programming in gifted education. By sharing her interests and experiences, Dr. Brulles supports others in their efforts to develop all our gifted learners’ potential.

Karen L. Brown, M.Ed., is an education consultant and a gifted program mentor at Paradise Valley Unified School District in Arizona. She was previously an elementary school gifted specialist and a professor of gifted education at Arizona State University.

Karen lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Editorial Reviews

2019 Book of the Year Award

NAGC

A thoroughly user-friendly guide that will help classroom teachers expertly use flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to respond to their students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests. Unreservedly recommended!

From the Publisher

2019 Legacy Book Award for Educators

TAGT

Highly valuable.”— MiddleWeb

MiddleWeb

A great resource that could transform the classrooms in your school. Recommended.

School Library Connection

One of the most challenging aspects of teaching in today’s diverse classroom is the differentiated practice of effectively using flexible grouping and collaborative learning. Teaching and learning experts Brulles and Brown have aptly addressed these practices in this remarkably well-articulated text. Everything you need to know, understand, and be able to do are spelled out in a comprehensive manner. This step-by-step text gives you all the tools, directions, and methods for making flexible grouping and collaboration work in your classroom. This ‘go-to’ resource should be on every teacher’s desk; studied, highlighted, tabbed, and applied!

Richard M. Cash

This guide helps dispel the myths surrounding ability grouping while providing effective teaching practices and real-life classroom scenarios for various grouping models.

Learning magazine

A thoroughly user-friendly guide that will help classroom teachers expertly use flexible grouping and differentiation strategies to respond to their students’ diverse learning needs, abilities, and interests. Unreservedly recommended!

Midwest Book Review

We know from research that collaboration can enhance learning; however, group work can be ‘messy’ at times. All too often, teachers avoid putting their students into groups because they think it wastes time or is just too difficult to manage. Brulles and Brown have written a book for teachers who are looking for more flexibility in how to form and manage groups for different purposes. They provide a plethora of learning activities and questioning strategies that are classroom tested and easily implemented to meet the needs of a range of learners—from ways to vary to the complexity of tasks to how to design engaging group projects. This book offers new ideas to novice and veteran teachers alike.

Karin Hess

An excellent read that both demystifies and clarifies what exactly is grouping and how it can be used as an effective method for instruction and assessment in the modern mixed-ability classroom. Dina Brulles and Karen Brown explain the benefits of teaching and learning through grouping in a clear and comprehensive manner. More importantly, they provide concrete and creative examples of best practices and instructional methods educators can use to address and respond to the diverse yet individual academic and socioemotional needs of all students. If your goal is to develop and deliver deeper, student-centered learning experiences that prompt deeper thinking and promote talent development, then this is the book you need to read!

Erik M. Francis

A Teacher’s Guide to Flexible Grouping and Collaborative Learning provides the compelling why flexible grouping is essential for achieving equity in today’s diverse classrooms, as well as detailed classroom scenarios and relatable real-world examples demonstrating how flexible grouping has been successfully implemented in elementary and secondary classrooms to support the unique needs of each student. The specific teaching and learning strategies and usable tools included provide what teachers and students need to accomplish truly personalized learning within today’s classrooms.

Dr. Lauri B. Kirsch

The authors provide the most comprehensive guide to group learning that I have seen in my quarter century of teaching and researching grouping and talent development. The introductory sections reviewing relevant research and responding to common (and misguided) criticisms and myths of grouping are excellent and easily digestible, and the countless strategies and tips will prove useful for anyone working with K–12 students or supervising educators who do. This book should be required reading in all of our teacher preparation programs!

Jonathan Plucker