The One With Groups

There are few sounds I love more than hearing my students collaborate and share their learning with one another.  It makes my teacher heart leap with joy every single time.  

We do groups a lot in my classroom.

I'm always looking for new creative way to create those groups.

I like to keep my students on their toes.  

They never know what crazy way I'm going to put them into groups.

I thought I would share with you some of my favorite ways to create groups.

One of my favorite ways to create groups is to use Clock Partners.

 I love clock partners because they allow you to create multiples groups at the beginning of the year. There are several variations of this idea.  I used a variation this past year called appointment cards.  This worked great for my older students.

The idea is that students set appointments for different times.  I usually do this during the first week of school.  I like to set perameters for the students.  For example, their one o clock partner needs to be someone of the opposite gender.  Their three o clock partner needs to be someone who they aren't already sitting with (we had tables).

There are several variations and forms for clock partners.  You can use them to create as many or as few partners as you want.  When you need students to get together in groups you simply tell to get with their six o clock group or whatever time you wish.

Another cute idea is to use a picture to create puzzles.  Pass out the puzzle pieces to your students and then they find the people who complete their puzzle.  You could use pictures that are related to your content area.

This next one is new to me but I am excited to try it out next year.  It is an app called Pikme.  Have any of you used it?

You can set up classes and then use this app to group them for you.  You can select how many groups you want and how many students in each group.

This post goes into more details about this app.


So what are some of your favorite ways to create groups?  I would love to hear your ideas and suggestions.