by Hayley Bridgwood
This year, students in Classes 6/7 and 8, along with some students in Classes 4 and 5, have participated in cross-age flexible groups during Maths Practice sessions. This flexible grouping is designed to meet students where they are at in their learning, whether they need to strengthen foundational skills, consolidate what they already know, or explore more advanced topics.
Meeting our students’ learning needs in maths is at the heart of this flexible grouping approach and, this year, it has allowed us to support and stretch students in even more personalised ways.
Practically, what this has looked like is all the Maths Practice classes being scheduled at the same time, with four different teachers made available to work across the two class groups. The teachers collaborate in the planning and reporting and regularly discuss the students’ engagement and progress. As a part of the learning program, students are assessed at regular intervals through questioning, quick quizzes, topic tests and more open-ended tasks. This formative assessment provides valuable feedback for the teachers to keep refining their practices and also gives insight into whether each student is receiving an appropriate level of challenge. What is important to us is that all students are supported to engage and to experience success in their maths learning.
As flexible grouping is a dynamic process, some students have moved between groups for different topics and Teachers have collaborated with students who request to be in a different group. This dynamic approach is enabling us to differentiate and personalise maths teaching and learning, while supporting student agency.
When a number of senior school students were asked to reflect on how Maths Practice had been for them this year they shared a range of perspectives:
‘It helps me because I get to work in smaller groups more often’
‘It’s good because you get to work with people who know similar maths as you;’  
‘It felt a bit odd to start with because I’d only ever seen some of the students in my group at lunchtime, and not in classes with me’
‘I like how things to don’t go too quickly or too slowly’.
In 2025 we are looking forward to facilitating this same approach for all students across Classes 5-8 during Maths Practice sessions. Our goal is to create a mathematics learning environment where every student feels both stretched and supported. We’re pleased with how flexible grouping has been helping our students connect with maths at their comfort and confidence level, and we are committed to refining this approach using various feedback mechanisms over the coming year.
If you’re interested in learning a bit more about this approach, including research that supports the effectiveness of flexible grouping as a tool in differentiated instruction, here are a couple of recent references.
  • Taylor and Gafni (2021) discuss that flexible grouping has allowed teachers to provide just the right level of challenge, and enabled students to build confidence and develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts.
  • Carol Ann Tomlinson’s work on differentiated instruction (2017) highlights how adapting teaching methodology, complexity of skills and content, assessment, pacing, and degree of independence can meet the diverse needs of learners.