Grouping Students

For the beginning of this unit it would be beneficial to keep them as a whole group as I would be presenting new material about atomic states and physical/chemical properties. As the teacher I would lead the class in a brief lecture to introduce the concept.

After going over the bulk of the information of the new lesson I would have the students break apart into small independent groups to work on the handout on which they are instructed to identify physical or chemical properties. When grouping the students for this task I would want to ensure that the students are grouped with others they would mesh with or work well with. Obviously I would have to be sure to not group all the extroverts together because they could very easily go off topic. In the same reasoning I could not group all introverts together because they might have a hard time getting started. I would want to make sure that they are equally spread out amongst the groups. I would also need to take their learning levels into consideration. Pairing up advanced students with those that struggle would be beneficial.

We would then as a whole group go over our answers and see where some might disagree. I think having an open discussion furthers the learning of the students so they can see as the different views of their peers. For the last part of the lesson I have the students come up with their own chemical or physical properties they see in the world. It would be beneficial for students to work in pairs and defend their answers to each other. Again I would want to pair those struggling students up with somewhat advanced ones to ensure that they can feed off each other.

When grouping students it is important to remember that the goal is for all of the students to succeed. Yes grouping struggling students with advanced students can help both but we need to make sure that the struggling students are willing to try and won’t just bring down the whole group. At the same time you want to make sure that all students are given a fighting chance to learn.

References:

McLaughlin, M. (2015). Organizing for Teaching and Learning. In Content Area Reading: Teaching and Learning for College and Career Readiness(2nd ed., pp. 130-135). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.