Looping is an instructional practice that allows the teacher to keep the same students over a two-year period. Multiage grouping is a more complex form of the multiyear configuration where the same teacher instructs students from two or three grade levels until they have completed the highest grade represented in that classroom. Both configurations present a logical approach toward developing long-term relationships which benefit students, teachers, parents, and administrators. Looping and multiage instruction beginnings go back to the one-room schoolhouse long before the Common School Reform Movement which introduced the graded school system of the 1860s. Even though the graded school system is over 150 years old, it still remains entrenched today. Consequently, looping and multiage instruction represent practices that require a paradigm shift from the graded school system.