Multi-Age Classroom Curriculum Implementing Thematic Units, Grades 4-6

This creative project cites research on the benefits of multi-age education and thematic units to raise awareness and to promote the use of these educational strategies. Research shows that multi-age education can be beneficial to students by allowing students to work at their own pace in each subject. In a multi-age classroom, students are grouped by ability rather than age, which allows all students to excel in areas they are gifted in and to receive additional help in weaker subjects. This setting allows students to collaborate with learners of various ages and abilities, which promotes pro-social behaviors and reinforces learning. While multi-age met its peak in the American education system in the 1980s-1990s, in recent decades, multi-age learning has lost its momentum due to poorly implemented programs and improperly trained teachers (Grant, et al., 1996, p. 31). Through this creative project, a curriculum based on thematic units for a multi-age classroom comprised of 4th-6th grades was actualized. This project provides a basic structure of a daily schedule and various teaching strategies to organize a multi-age classroom. However, the main focus of this project is on the development of one thematic unit to exemplify how a teacher can implement a thematic unit in a multi-age classroom and scaffold the learning effectively depending on each student's level and ability. The unit was centered on the theme of Ancient Greece and Rome, which was implemented into three content areas: social studies, language arts, and science. The ultimate goal of this creative project is to publish the curriculum and make it available to teachers who are interested in implementing a multi-age curriculum in their classrooms. This curriculum will provide them with a model of a classroom structure and a sample unit, paired with research to support the benefits of multi-age and thematic unit approaches.