Layering Lessons

Homeschooling multiple grades can be a real hassle. You can make yourself crazy trying to keep all the kids working but only really teaching one kid at a time. I’ve been there.

Math was the most difficult, and I know there was at least one year that I did a really bad job teaching math. I had 5 different levels to teach, and I really didn’t know how to teach them all, so I basically let them teach themselves from the book and then wandered from one to the next to see how they were doing. My brain went on overload trying to jump from one math subject to another over and over again. At some point I realized that one was falling way behind and this was not working.

Slowly I began to make tweaks in my teaching methods until I figured out how to teach a group of different levels efficiently: layering the lessons.

Here’s my beautiful homeschool drawing of the layers of the earth. 😆

What does it mean to layer lessons?

Just as the earth has layers from the core to the crust, our learning year by year comes in layers. In reading and writing we first have to learn the letters, then learn their sounds, then learn how to put them together into words. From there we learn to put words together into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs.

Math is no different- we start with the concept of counting, then learn the number symbols that go with them. Then we can use those symbols to put together and take apart numbers in addition and subtraction, then in multiplying and dividing. All the additional knowledge adds to what we already know; it builds on something we already learned. That is the core concept of layering lesson. That is the simplest way to go about homeschooling multiple grades.

Let’s apply that to a single lesson. The concept of multiplication can be taught with manipulatives put into groups or arrays. Toasted oat cereal has been my go-to manipulative for math in homeschool all these years (they love that they can eat them when we’re done). But they certainly aren’t the only things I use, and here I have milk lids. While you’re teaching the younger ones the concept, the older ones get a review. Then you hand the little ones their manipulatives and go to the next level.

At the next level you’ll have manipulatives or pictures and simple multiplication. Next is practicing the single digit facts, then doing multidigit multiplication, then multiplying decimals, etc. Each student can break off to start their practice when they’ve been taught at their level. And even though they’re working, they still get a peek at what’s ahead for them.

Layering with multiple books takes planning ahead.

The tricky part about these layered lessons is the planning, especially if you are working with multiple books. I’ve never met two math books that teach the different concepts in the same order, so you really have to look through and write down page numbers that correlate. It’s especially tricky if your math books have review sections, because with the teaching in the different orders, there will be things to review that haven’t been taught. That reviewing, then, has to be taken care of by you outside the book. Yeah, that’s annoying, but I feel like the simplicity and efficiency of the teaching time makes it worth the extra planning.

For more on layering math lessons check out my part 2 post. It has a simpler version of layering lessons for math.

Homeschooling multiple grades is for more than math

The concept of layered lessons can be used in all the homeschool subjects. I think about it the most with math because it’s the hardest to prep and makes the most difference in the teaching. All the other subjects, though, still get simplified by layering the teaching.

This year for Language Arts I’m layering by having all my kids listen to me read a short story, then they all respond either with a picture, a sentence, or a paragraph. My 8th grader has other reading on top of that.

In Social Studies I’m layering by having my 8th grader read from the Cultural Geography book I teach from before our lesson, then he does the workbook that goes with it while the younger kids color in their map coloring books. We then discuss the material together and take notes, which are just word for the younger ones, and words with definitions for my older ones.

I have a similar approach to Geology. The 8th grader works from his higher level book, then he can contribute while I teach the younger ones a little bit less. Below is a geology lesson I did homeschooling multiple grades.

Here’s a “layers of the earth” lesson we did in homeschool a couple weeks ago:

Here is #5. He’s just made a model of the earth and cut it in half, following the directions in his book. (He starts earlier than the others so he can get some 1-on-1 time and then help me teach the younger ones.)

A little later we worked together on a worksheet that came out of a book designed for younger kids. It’s way too easy for #8, but he enjoys it, it reinforces the basics, and he can help the others with it.

Then we did an activity from the same book as the worksheet. This involved using straws to find the layers of a candy bar like a geologist would study the layers of the earth.

(Geology Activity Book for kids by Meghan Vestal, found on Amazon)

And here is the filled in beautiful diagram 😉 that the older ones put in their notes.

I hope that this information on homeschooling multiple grades was clear and helpful. If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section, or email me using my Contact page.

And go enjoy your adventure.