Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Middle Grades Special Education Math I teach a self contained, special education class with students from 5th grade to 8th grade who are on different developmental levels. In the past the teacher before me taught them at the level of the lowest grade in the class. In other words, if I have a room with 5th through 8th graders, this teacher would teach from 5th grade standards. I am not comfortable doing this because I believe that my higher level students will suffer. What other options do I have that will be most effective at increasing student achievement? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) I have a room very similar to this, but what I've found is that many of those 5th grade standards are recursive--meaning they're built upon to form the concepts for the higher grades. Knowing this, I would introduce the concept based on the fifth grade standard and then group the students based on ability and remediate by building on that fifth grade foundation in the groups. It's very difficult to do, but you will be surprise how shaky some of your students foundations are!