Case Study: Jim Colbert

This case study examines a third-grade teacher, Jim Colbert, in a large inner-city school located in Northeast who has been teaching for 4 years. Colbert is expected to teach language arts using basal readers and a district required curriculum. Jim has been assigned to teach 3-A class for ‘bright’ students, which is an advanced class. Although, there is special concern about one student, Carlos, who seems to be lacking the ability to keep up with the advanced class. Carlos is from a Spanish-speaking family, and only speaks English while he is at school. Colbert expresses worry and concern over Carlos’s lack of ability to keep up with the class, he takes certain steps to try to help Carlos improve his spelling and phonics, but it is simply not
The teacher Colbert, expressed concern about this to the principle, who told him that because his math skills are so advanced plus his potential, that they thought he would be better off in the higher achieving group. As of now it seems that Carlos is falling behind in class, but having more advanced peers around him could actually benefit him. Ability grouping involves using a standardized or achievement tests to create groups of students who are considered very similar to each other in learning ability. This is also an approach to deal with immigrant students, such as Carlos. There are steps that could be measured to improve the ability-grouping. Carlos’s school uses “between-class grouping” when students are divided into different classes based on their learning abilities. A more beneficial method, especially for Carlos is called “within-class grouping”, where one class is divided into groups for reading and math instruction. “Within-class grouping” has the advantages of being flexible in terms of group assignments (Snowman et al., 2013). There are 3 levels of classes or groups that can be formed: high, average, and low, this approach is also called tracking. Carlos could be in a group which has a high-level for math but a low-level for reading. Being surrounded with kids who also struggle in reading, will not only make Carlos feel more comfortable in the learning environment, but he will also feel more comfortable around his peers. Although this is a difficult approach for an instructor, because he/she would have multiple groups of students to focus on, it would be more beneficial for the children to be placed with kids who are on the same learning