What It Isn't

This kid's five, that kid's six—bam!—we've got a multi-age classroom. Right?

Not exactly.

 

Not quite what we had in mind.

Multi-age classrooms aren't just classes filled with kids of varying ages. After all, a kindergarten class could have students ranging from ages four to six and still just be regular old kindergarten. So just how multi do those ages have to be for the classroom to qualify?

What It Is

Here's the simple answer:

Multi-age classrooms aren't so much about the fact that there are children of multiple ages within them (misleading name, we know). It's the way in which those children are taught and the way in which their differing ages, maturity levels, and developmental stages are used to the best advantage—academically and socially—for everyone in the room.

As multi-age guru Marion Leier states about the method, "A successful multiage class is formed by placing together a balance of numbers of students of different age groups with a range of achievement levels."

And she's no Leier—er, liar.

Making a Comeback

Although multi-age classrooms used to be the norm in the U.S. (think Little House on the Prairie), they went out of style in the early 1900s…only to come back toward the end of the century and really gain steam again in the 1990s when interest in early childhood development really took off.

As educators, theorists, parents, and pediatricians began to recognize that not all children sit up, walk, talk, or get hooked on phonics according to a predetermined schedule, educational approaches that honored these differing rates of development became more attractive.

How Does It Work?

Just throwing a bunch of kids of different ages together won't do the trick. As Leier notes, students should not only be of differing ages, but also of differing skill levels. That's why heterogeneous grouping is one of the main tenets of the multi-age approach.

And with that heterogeneous grouping comes another educational buzzword: differentiation.

Recognizing that not all children begin reading at age four, multiplying at age five, and writing their first bits of code at age six, teachers in multi-age classrooms use differentiated instruction to meet students where they are and allow them to progress according to their own timelines, regardless of chronological age.

Of course, in order to allow this to happen, teachers in multi-age classrooms must be prepared to offer individualized lessons that will engage and challenge students at multiple levels. Which, as you can imagine, is no easy task.

Every lesson and assessment must be planned with a diverse population in mind. And, of course, these plans and assessments can't necessarily be rolled over from year to year once they've been developed. Instead, instructional materials and strategies have to constantly evolve to suit the specific students who populate the classroom from one year to the next. Rough for the teacher? Yep. But it's bound to get those kiddos engaged.

In addition to heterogeneous grouping and differentiated instruction, multi-age classrooms tend to share the following characteristics:

• a child-centered, teacher directed approach, with the teacher acting as a facilitator;
• active, cooperative student-learning;
• flexibility in terms of the way students are grouped for different lessons and tasks; and
• shifting mentor-novice relationships between students depending on the subjects and skills being addressed.

If you're still stuck on the more-work-for-the-teacher thing, let's get down to the pluses of the method.

The Benefits

In a multi-age classroom, students of different ages and skill levels may be given different roles in the classroom that match their varying levels of maturity and achievement. It's important to note that these roles, and the particular instruction students receive, may not necessarily correlate with their ages.

Typically, the older students are the ones to take on the mentor role, but some younger students may be ready for more responsibility or have greater self-discipline than some older students in the room. Either way, the idea behind a multi-age classroom is that despite the inclusion of "age" in the name, instruction is geared toward students' learning levels rather than their birth dates.

Let's hammer out a nice list of the benefits associated with the multi-age classroom approach:

• natural tutoring opportunities which arise from having mixed ages and a wider range of learning levels in the classroom (source);
• the chance for students to progress from novice to mentor over the course of their time in the classroom (source);
• a new classroom dynamic each year as older students transition out, younger students become the older students, and new little classmates transition in;
• enhanced social, emotional, and language acquisition skills thanks to the encouragement of novice/mentor relationships between students (source);
• greater similarity to the social dynamics of the "real world," where people are rarely (if ever) placed in groups with same-age peers ("all the 28-year-old consultants in this room!") (source);
• reduced competition and greater collaboration (source);
• the opportunity for students to work with the same teacher for more than one year, which can deepen relationships and decrease the anxiety that sometimes accompanies "starting over" with a new teacher each year (source); and
• improved parent-teacher relationships (again, because of the multiple years students and their families may be working with a particular teacher or team of teachers), as well as more parental involvement and better overall connections between schools and the families of students in multi-age classrooms (source).

The Drawbacks

Where there are pros, there are usually cons.

Here are a few of the perceived obstacles associated with the multi-age classroom approach:

• Some teachers and administrators find multi-age classrooms difficult to implement and maintain. Why? Because, since they require that awesome differentiated-instruction thing, that also means a heavier workload for teachers than in single-age or homogenously grouped classes.
• Parents can be reluctant to enroll their children in multi-age classrooms for fear that they will be shortchanged either as the older students (not challenged enough) or the younger students (in over their heads).
• Because multi-age classrooms typically remain intact for more than one academic year (same teachers/teaching team and a portion of the students), problematic relationships between students or poor teacher-student fits won't automatically reset at the end of the year. Alarm bells going off.
• Multi-age classrooms can pose a problem when standardized testing time rolls around, since most standardized tests require students to be assessed according to a specific grade-level without accounting for multi-age groupings. Oh standardized tests, why must you always throw a wrench in everything?

Conning the Cons

Sure, it can be a struggle. But multi-age classrooms are the core of a range of educational models. Specific models include Montessori, Waldorf, Homeschooling, and Unschooling. And of course, many public and private schools incorporate multi-age classrooms as an option for students and parents, particularly at early grade levels. You don't need to do it on the daily to wring out some of those benefits.