Flexible Learning | The Belonging Project

Flexible Grouping and Learning Pathways

This course equips educators to design learning experiences that honour student differences through intentional, flexible grouping and adaptive learning pathways. Moving beyond fixed ability groups, participants will explore structures that allow learners to collaborate, lead, and receive support in fluid ways based on task, interest, and need. The course provides strategies for co-creating goals, offering choices, and ensuring all students experience success in inclusive environments.

Start Here

Welcome to the course! This learning experience is designed to help you explore inclusive education through a blend of practical strategies and powerful storytelling. Before diving into the course content, your first step is to choose the story that will guide your learning.

About This Course

This course supports you in building inclusive, flexible learning environments that recognize and amplify the strengths of every learner. While you’ll deepen your understanding through interactive learning interludes, everything begins with story.

Each course is anchored in a set of narrative case studies—realistic, practice-based stories that illuminate inclusive strategies in action. These stories will help you reflect, connect, and see how the course concepts apply in real school contexts.

Choose Your Story

Each story features:

A Prologue to set the scene
Four Chapters that trace growth, tension, and change
An Epilogue to reflect on learning and impact

Choose one story to follow throughout the course. Pick the one that most closely matches your role, context, or interests. This story will provide a consistent lens as you move through the learning interludes and activities.

Not sure which to choose? No problem. You can always return to this page to explore other stories. Many learners choose to follow more than one story to see how inclusive practices come to life in different settings.

What Happens Next?

Once you’ve chosen your story:

If you're learning independently, head to the Course Content section and begin with Learning Interlude 1.
If you're learning with a facilitator, they’ll guide you through the journey using the facilitation materials provided.

You're ready to begin. Scroll down to explore the stories and pick the one that will guide your path through the course.

Finding Strength in Shared Stories

Meet Zach, a Grade 7 student at Wayfinder Middle School who has long believed he is “just not a reader.” Despite his natural curiosity and verbal creativity, years of struggling with traditional reading tasks have led Zach to withdraw during literacy instruction. He often appears disengaged in reading groups, hesitant to contribute, and avoids written responses. His teachers see flashes of insight during class discussions, but his written assignments rarely reflect the depth of his thinking.

Ms. Donovan, a language arts teacher committed to inclusive practice, notices Zach’s discomfort. When planning a novel study, she experiments with a new approach—one that organizes students into interest-based reading groups rather than ability levels. With this small but intentional shift, Zach finds himself in a group reading a graphic novel about youth-led climate justice movements, a topic that resonates with his growing passion for the environment. What begins as an experiment in grouping transforms into a journey of identity, voice, and academic confidence.

Through collaborative roles, authentic dialogue, and personalized pathways for expression, Zach starts to reframe what it means to be a reader and begins to believe he belongs in the circle of learners.

Prologue - The Reluctant Reader ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - A New Grouping Model ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Planning With Students ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Encouraged to Lead ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Reading, Rethought ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - A Shift in Identity ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Pathways Through Numbers

Explore Riverstone Elementary, where a group of educators notice a persistent challenge in their math classrooms: while some students quickly move through assignments, others sit frozen with uncertainty. Despite a strong math curriculum and ample resources, engagement and confidence remain uneven across grade levels. The school’s instructional leadership team begins to wonder what if it’s not the students who need fixing, but the way learning is structured?

They begin to question the tradition of one-path math instruction. Instead of grouping students by perceived ability, they explore ways to offer multiple entry points into mathematical thinking, ones that honour how learners differ in pace, processing, and preference. Teachers begin experimenting with choice boards, learning progressions, and peer-supported “math labs.” Some students gravitate toward hands-on tools, others toward storytelling or visual strategies, and some toward more abstract approaches.

As the model evolves, students begin to see themselves as capable mathematicians, regardless of their starting point. Confidence grows, and so does collaboration. Through reflection and iteration, Riverstone’s educators witness something profound: when students have voice in how they approach a task, they are not only more engaged, but more willing to persist. Math becomes less about getting it “right” and more about exploring, justifying, and owning one’s learning journey.

Prologue - One Size Doesn’t Fit All ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Math Choice Boards ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Clarity Through Progressions ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Flexible Math Labs ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Owning the Journey ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Data-Informed Decisions ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Inquiry in the Wild

Meet Tasha, a high school biology teacher at Prairie View School. Tasha teaches a multi-graded biology class in a rural setting where students span a wide range of abilities, backgrounds, and interests. Traditional labs and one-size-fits-all activities have fallen flat. Some students disengage, while others feel left behind. Tasha knows she needs to shift her practice, but isn’t sure where to begin.

Inspired by conversations with colleagues and student feedback, Tasha begins redesigning her science instruction around flexible grouping, layered inquiry tasks, and co-created pathways. By offering students choice in how they participate and demonstrate understanding, she begins to see a dramatic shift in engagement. Over time, her classroom transforms into a dynamic learning ecosystem, one that adapts to the needs of each student, rather than asking them to adapt to it.

Prologue - One Room, Many Needs ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Layered Inquiry Labs ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Planning With Purpose ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Group Dynamics Reimagined ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Student-Led Symposium ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Looking Back to Look Ahead ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Confidence in Two Languages

Meet Paulina, a Grade 5 student at Harvest Hill Elementary School who is learning English as an additional language (EAL). Soft-spoken and observant, Paulina understands much more than she says. Her ideas are rich and insightful, but language barriers and unfamiliar peer dynamics often keep her from sharing them in class. She spends most group work passively listening or completing tasks alone, not because she doesn’t have something to contribute but because the structures don’t yet invite her in.

When her teacher begins experimenting with flexible grouping strategies that honour identity, first language, and student strengths, Paulina’s classroom experience changes. She is paired with peers who value her contributions and is offered ways to express her thinking beyond English-only discussion. As her confidence grows, so does her leadership and by year’s end, Paulina becomes a quiet but powerful voice within the classroom community.

Prologue - More Than Translation ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Identity-Aware Grouping ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Student Strength Planning ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Collaboration That Uplifts ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Pathways to Expression ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - A New Kind of Leader ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )

Designing for Belonging

Meet Kayla, a learning support teacher at Prairie View School who works with multiple classrooms across Grades 5 to 9. As part of her role, she often observes students disengaged from group work. Some withdrawing entirely, others dominating while peers become passive participants. She begins to notice a pattern: students’ reactions to group tasks often reflect their unmet sensory needs, unspoken communication preferences, or previous experiences of exclusion.

Rather than scrapping group work, Kayla leans into co-design with classroom teachers to develop flexible group structures rooted in autonomy, safety, and purpose. From redefining group roles to creating visual supports and co-constructed norms, Kayla helps teachers reimagine collaboration not as a rigid structure but as a living, responsive design. Her story illustrates how thoughtful systems-level design can dismantle invisible barriers and nurture belonging where it once felt out of reach.

Prologue - Structure Isn’t the Enemy ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 1 - Barrier Spotting ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 2 - Progression-Based Co-Planning ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 3 - Partnership Protocols ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Chapter 4 - Pathway Menus ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )
Epilogue - Co-Creation Culture ( 📖 Read | 🎧 Listen | 🎬 Watch )