I teach a multiage age class. What should I do?

We have many teachers that juggle multiple grade levels within one classroom and are able to use the program successfully. The writing the standards and skills between grade bands are fairly similar, so it's best to choose one grade level to use for your core lessons rather than trying to juggle 2 different writing lessons. If your students are generally low writers, use the lower grade level and differentiate as needed for your older students. Our program was designed to be flexible for teachers with a wide range of student needs, so there's a lot of opportunity to tweak it to fit your classroom.

It makes the most sense to teach all your students together during the mini-lesson, using one unit/topic for the entire class. Then, you can differentiate both in your expectations for students (level of output: 3 paragraph vs. 5 paragraphs, 1 sensory detail per paragraph vs. 3 details, etc.) as well as your small group or one-on-one lessons. We have some great resources in our grammar and intervention libraries that will allow you to tailor your instruction to students' needs.

There's one consideration to keep in mind: if your students will be looping with you from year-to-year, some teachers prefer to alternate the unit prompts in the second year to avoid re-usuing the same topics for students. All our units are editable, so it's fairly easy to tweak as needed. You can choose to use a different grade level materials as is next year OR simply swap out the prompts the second year while still following the same lesson plans.