Mrs. Groene Tries Homogenous Grouping

Mrs. Groene and I had an excellent conversation this week about a succes story in her classroom.  I asked, and she said I could share the gist:
Mrs. Groene began by dividing her classes into three homogenous groups based on their Lexile scores.  She gave each group a list of five stories in their appropriate Lexile range from which to choose for this assignment.  The stories were uploaded to Edmodo along with a few audio files as well.  The assignments were uploaded as well.  Each group had its own folder from which to work.
Mrs. Groene observed a noticeable increase in motivation, engagement, and participation as voices that were generally quiet during large group discussion were heard in the smaller group.  Leaders emerged in each smaller discussion that were both surprising and gratifying.
Because students were grouped by readiness, students were able to show what they had learned about stories (and, in this case, what makes them scary) without their reading level being an impediment to their learning.  Because students had choice, they were were more motivated to engage.  And because students had access to a variety of resources, including her, they were less likely to become stymied in the process.
Mrs. Groene provided the time in class and the resources and used Edmodo to organize and manage the resources and the grading for this project.