With classrooms of 25-32 students each class period for high school and middle school students, grouping arrangements and accommodations for students with physical disabilities can be a logistical nightmare for teachers trying to plan accessible learning objectives and rearranging the room for various learning activities.
The tips below can provide the best effective groupings for students with physical disabilities when teachers create learning objectives with flexible grouping intent in the classroom.
- Special Interest Grouping - Students with physical disabilities can be grouped with their peers according to special interest preferences they have indicated on a classroom survey tracking student interest and learning styles. For example if students who play sports or have an interest in astronomy want to group together on projects during the year, let them. Their common interest will serve as a motivational tool to keep them on task and engaged.
- Diagnostic Assessment Grouping - When students take pre and post assessment testings during the quarter or semester in your specific content area, you can group them according to academic ability levels or use that testing knowledge to diversify the groupings by putting high, medium and low ability groupings of students together to work on projects and classroom activities. Teachers can create pair-share groups or group leaders from each ability level to build learning and leadership capacity in all students.
- Cooperative or collective grouping - Teachers can create learning opportunities where students can group according to self-selection which will provide students with physical disabilities another academic and social learning experience to bond and connect.
- Random grouping - Sometimes, student grouping needs to be directed by the teachers to achieve the learning objective. By grouping students randomly (i.e. have them count off or give them a number when they enter the classroom to designate teacher directed student groupings for the class period), teachers can be intentional and purposeful in assigning specific students to specific groups for projects or activities.
Whether students are group homogeneously according to the identifiers that define similarity in academic skill and social ability or heterogeneously according to a diversity of flexible grouping opportunities that combine their differences into collaboratively working arrangements, teachers can show how differentiated instruction must be aligned with differentiated grouping arrangements for student success and access to learning.
