As the majority of us experienced growing up, schools group students based on age. This is how grade levels from kindergarten through twelfth typically work in most traditional school systems.

When schools group students by grade, they often determine content not by skill levels, but by age. This traditional school model centers on the philosophy that children develop along the same path, give or take some mild variations.

While there are many students who have flourished in this kind of educational setting, a major pitfall of this system is that it cannot account for students’ individual needs and strengths. This reality is particularly damaging for students with learning disabilities.

When instruction is designed for only typical learners, it risks overlooking the needs of neurodivergent students.

At Winston Prep, we group students by their learning profiles, not by age. A learning profile explains each student’s individual strengths and weaknesses, helping us understand how they learn best, how we can challenge them, and what skills they need to succeed. These strengths and weaknesses affect students academically, socially, and emotionally.

We are mindful when grouping students to make sure they are within a few years age-wise. This helps support social connections.  However, we focus more on matching students who have similar academic and social emotional strengths and challenges and would benefit from similar pacing and approach to skill development so that they thrive within the classroom community.

For instance, students with a Nonverbal Learning Disorder (NVLD) might benefit from learning strategies that help them to recognize patterns. Students with executive-functioning struggles or dyslexia would likely not benefit from this work. They might benefit more from a program that addresses their weaknesses in organization or recall.

Grouping students by learning profile allows our teachers to approach programming with a high level of assessment and precision.

Content is often the driving force behind grade-based educational models. Grouping by learning profile allows instructors to concentrate on skills-based remediation, using content as the vehicle to teach and develop skills. This allows teachers to identify each student's goals before determining the content they will learn. In this manner, the program centers on the students themselves.

While the actual material that students learn is an important piece of the puzzle, teachers approach selecting content with the following perspective in mind: What material will give students the opportunity to build skills that directly tie to their goals?

For example, to target the goal of making connections, a literature instructor might select a specific novel that emphasizes relationships and their impact on the characters, allowing students to develop that skill within the context of the story. A history instructor will use the theme of revolutions to explicitly practice strategies that develop conceptual cause-and-effect connections, as will a science instructor teach those same strategies, highlighting connections within lab work.  

Another important benefit of grouping students by learning profile is that it allows instructors to support the social and emotional needs that often come with learning disabilities.

Building critical skills outside academics is important for lifelong success. However, when schools group students by age alone, they often leave crucial social-emotional skills behind. This very often impacts their learning experience, making it harder to develop critical skills like resilience, self-advocacy, and developing and maintaining social connections. This also makes it more difficult for teachers to offer the right support.

For example, even though typically developing middle schoolers might be expected to problem-solve on their own, we know that students with executive functioning disorders struggle to approach problem-solving tasks strategically. In a classroom where students are grouped by their learning profiles, a teacher can create content that targets this skill.

With a group of students who have a similar learning profile, instructors can spend time teaching students to pause and recognize a problem, strategically break it down, brainstorm solutions, and then intentionally choose an appropriate solution until they reach independence.

Instead of following a set course, this type of instruction adapts to the students’ response, bringing a level of flexibility that is not possible when students are working toward reaching undifferentiated, grade-level goals.

By teaching to the individual’s learning profile rather than the hypothetical average student, teachers can reach all students on an individual level and, as a result, meet students where they are while fostering their independence.

At the heart of the Winston Prep learning methodology is understanding each and every student’s individual learning needs and profile—often for the first time in their lives. Learn more about our approach.