The dynamic nature of language learning, student background, and your classroom requires us to be strategic when grouping students. Following a prescriptive curriculum grouping will result in missed opportunities. At the same time, EL Education offers best-practice suggestions on how to group students. 

One best practice is that students are grouped according to data that shows how well each student is meeting each standard over time. For that reason, EL Education does not provide a generic, prescriptive grouping suggestion for each lesson item. 

Overall, it is important that you don’t use one static grouping strategy; just like any group of students, multilingual learners will benefit from working with a variety of students. Specifically, in terms of English language development, multilingual learners benefit from spoken and written interaction with other students who exhibit a range of language proficiency levels and communication styles. 

Remember that while grouping strategies are important, the greatest lever for student success is quality implementation of the curriculum ELD instruction: Language Maker routines.

Here are some sample scenarios to illustrate the point:

Home language groupings honor language identity while developing English

• Grouping multilingual learners strategically, in different configurations for different purposes, will allow you to provide targeted support to students and will give them a chance to support each other. Depending on the task, you may wish to group multilingual learners with other students who speak their home language, either in groups that include a range of English language proficiency or in groups that contain similar levels of language proficiency. 
• In home language groups with a range of English language proficiency, students with greater English language proficiency can help their peers negotiate particularly challenging tasks. These students can also serve as models for their peers, initiating discussion and providing implicit sentence frames. At the same time, students who need heavier support tend to ask questions or get stuck with language in a way that pushes their more proficient peers. Processes like these are ideal for language development. 
• In home language groups with similar levels of English language proficiency, students can help each other by grappling together with tasks, which also promotes English language development. 

Example grouping scenarios (general)

In each of the following home-language grouping scenarios, students empower themselves to honor multilingualism and their language identities:

• Grouping multilingual learners with diverse home languages
  • The benefit of grouping multilingual learners with diverse home languages is that students have the shared lived experience of working in multiple languages, unlike English-only speakers. In this configuration, consider grouping multilingual learners with other multilingual learners who are immediately adjacent in proficiency levels (e.g., a student at a beginning level with a student at an intermediate level) to maximize their language development. 
• Grouping multilingual learners with English-only learners or English-proficient multilingual learners
  • For most tasks, you may wish to group multilingual learners with English-only learners or English-proficient multilingual learners, who can provide language models and help multilingual learners feel successful when they communicate clearly, or help multilingual learners try out new language and help clarify the communication as necessary. The benefit for English-only learners or English proficiency multilingual learners is that students who need heavier support tend to ask questions or get stuck with language in a way that pushes their proficient peers.

Examples of grouping scenarios (specific task)

Consider the following scenarios as you analyze your student data. In these examples, Grade 2 students are writing a topic sentence about how fossils reveal the Earth’s history, which requires an explicit statement using time phrases such as After a long time, or long ago.

• Korean home language group with a range of English language proficiency
  • Students may choose to use Korean to navigate the task process. For example, they may discuss the requirements of the topic statement in Korean. They may discuss in Korean what they want to say in their topic sentence. They may translate the time phrases into Korean, if they are able and willing.
  • Students who have stronger English language proficiency may say and write their topic sentence in English (and may choose to translate the sentence into Korean if they are able), providing a model for students who need heavier support in English. 
  • This grouping may be preferred as students are grappling with the task.
• Spanish- and English-speaking, and Hindi- and English-speaking multilingual learners at a high-intermediate level, with an English-only speaker
  • Students can navigate the task in English, developing nuance in their language. They may play with alternative time phrases that express the same meaning, such as Millions of years ago, and with moving the time phrase into a different place in the sentence.
  • Students can compare their sentence construction with their peers’ and the author’s construction of the complex text or model text they are analyzing. They can discuss any differences they see and point out any corrections they would make. 
  • This grouping may be preferred to help refine students’ level of language proficiency.