Why grouping students

In the same way, if you let them choose where they sit in the class they will always sit in the same place. The danger with letting the students decide who they want to work with on activities is that it will always be the same and therefore cliques of friendship groups will form within the class.

Paul Seligson, a well known TEFL author and teacher trainer, recently gave a workshop about classroom management at a conference here in Barcelona. He sees it as detrimental to the classroom dynamic and I strongly agree with him. He believes that students should be moved around and they should never even sit in the same seat two classes running.

Life is short, please move. Random grouping The big advantage of forming groups at random is that it is seen as fair by all involved. If you need to make groups of five for an activity, work out how many groups that means for the students you have. Students, in our classrooms, know when they are being grouped to mainly tutor and remediate less capable students and We can also tick them off when we form groups solely for discipline purposes by placing the calm, obedient students in each group to separate and calm down the unruly ones.

Perhaps more often than not, students are savvy enough to play along when they recognize that the grouping is nothing more than a routine way to spend the time and has no real learning purpose at all. If given a choice, students prefer to learning in groups of their peers and friends homogeneous groups , but they also appreciate getting to know and learn from other members of the classroom.

This requires that we trust students to make good decisions and hold them accountable for following the norms of learning in groups. According to Marzano, Pickering and Pollock, effective learning in groups must have at least the following elements:. Remember that the desks are not attached to the floor—we can mix things up in heterogeneous and homogeneous groups in interesting and creative ways: eye color, left- or right-handedness, preferred pizza toppings, number of siblings, music preferences, gender, nationality, hair length, shoe laces, genetic traits, learning styles, etc.

Identifying Purposes If the purpose of the group learning activity is to help struggling students, the research shows that heterogeneous groups may help most. Deciding Which Is Best Because of this epiphany, I remember vowing that I would further differentiate my teaching by also seeking ways to give the upper-level students challenging and engaging learning activities.

For instance, the same reading level or math scores. Though some educators frown on this, it is still beneficial. Heterogeneous Group students based on differences. For instance, I try to look through my class list and decide who are my leaders. I would never sort them out in front of the class. Flashback to being picked last in kickball.

I also take note who butts heads and who works well together. Interest Group students based on their similar interests. Students are typically more motivated when they share common interests in a topic.

I remember one year letting some boys of mine independently study as an enrichment activity Egypt because they had an interest. It was one of the best presentations ever. Learning Style Group students based on their multiple intelligences. If they are linguistic, put them with other linguistic learners. If they are kinesthetic, take an aspirin and then put them together.