Instructions …

1. Instructions … • Please take a blue half sheet (located by the door), and fill it out. • Be sure to include your name. • Choose the response that best fits your comfort with using grouping strategies in the classroom. • Hand the sheet to me or my lovely assistant, Ms. Sherman. • Take a seat.

2. Using Grouping Strategies in Your Classroom Jenny Rosene 8th Grade DST

3. Purposeful Grouping

4. Group for Learning The purpose of flexible grouping is to facilitate learning. Flexible grouping facilitates learning when it: • allows for quick mastery of information and ideas • allows for additional exploration by students needing more time for mastery • allows for both collaborative and independent work • gives students a voice in work arrangements • allows students to work with a wide variety of peers • keeps students from being “pegged” as advanced or struggling

5. Group for Instruction The purpose of flexible grouping is to facilitate instruction. Flexible grouping facilitates instruction when it: • gives teachers multiple options for student work arrangements • encourages teachers to “try out” students in a variety of work settings • allows teachers to meet the varying needs of students in a single classroom • encourages the teacher to offer students equal access to high quality, meaningful work • encourages teachers to use a variety of strategies to engage students

6. Flexible Grouping • readiness • interest • learning styles Flexible grouping is a differentiation strategy in which students are grouped according to similar needs. Students can be grouped according to:

7. Flexible Grouping • re-teaching • review • skill-building The most common purposes for flexible grouping include: • practice • enrichment

8. Flexible Grouping • a single lesson or objective • a set of skills Flexible grouping creates temporary groups for an hour, a day, a week, or a month or so. It does not create permanent groups. The duration of a group can vary between: • a unit of study • a major concept or theme

9. Tiered Learning & Instruction Tiering is probably the simplest way to plan for flexible groups based on readiness/ability. “Tiered instruction provides different levels of learning tasks within the same unit or topic in order to align the curriculum to the different readiness levels of students and to respond to learner differences.” Kingore, Bertie (2004). Differentiation: Simplified, Realistic and Effective. Austin: Professional Associates Publishing

10. Tiered Learning & Instruction • readiness • complexity/level of challenge • degree of structure • degree of abstraction • level of support Lessons, tasks, and units can be tiered according to:

11. Tiered Learning & Instruction Lessons, tasks, and units can be tiered using: • Same texts/materials, different tasks • Different texts/materials, same tasks • Different texts/materials, different tasks

12. Other Flexible Groups In addition to tiering, you can group students by: • interest • learning style • gender

13. Preassessment In order to create effective tiers, you must first determine what kids know or what they can do. You must assess in advance of the lesson/unit. What are your objectives for the lesson, activity or unit? What do you want kids to know? Understand? Be able to do? (KUDo’s in the Heacox handouts)

14. Pre-assessment Strategies Taken, in part, from Making Differentiation a Habit by Diane Heacox

15. Quick Grouping Exercises Grouping by interest: • Dog person? • Cat person? • Animal hater? Grouping by readiness/ability Rate your cooking ability on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being novice, 10 expert). Without speaking, line up from lowest rating to highest. Grouping by learning style: • Would you rather: • discuss the Civil War? • watch a movie about the Civil War? • re-enact the Civil War?

16. Cooperative Groups Cooperative groups rely on diversity, each student bringing something different to the table. Cooperative groups are students working together to "attain group goals that cannot be obtained by working alone or competitively" (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 1986). http://edtech.kennesaw.edu/intech/cooperativelearning.htm#activities

17. Cooperative Groups http://projects.coe.uga.edu/epltt/index.php?title=Cooperative_Learning Members of cooperative groups are like a team working toward a goal. The team only wins when all members do their parts!

18. Cooperative Groups • proximity • strengths • learning styles • gender • personality • any criterion of diversity you can think of! Criteria to determine heterogeneous groups can be:

19. Quick Grouping Exercises • Rate your cooking ability on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being novice, 10 expert). • Without speaking, line up from lowest rating to highest. • Fold the line in half, so you’re standing directly across from someone. Rate your cooking ability on a scale of 1 – 10 (1 being novice, 10 expert). Without speaking, line up from lowest rating to highest. Count off by 4s. Re-group. • Other ideas: • Have kids assess a strength; create a group of mixed strengths. • Have kids choose an interest area within a topic, and create mixed groups for a well-rounded presentation.

20. Pre-assess based on your goals/objectives. (What do you want the kids to know, understand, do?) How To Manage Groups Use whole-class instruction to make your expectations clear to students before breaking into groups. Frontload your planning. Circulate to check for understanding, on-task behavior, and to clarify misunderstandings and directions. Post-assess Reflect and gather student feedback on grouping. Assess what worked and what needs tweaking for next time. USE YOUR DST!!

21. http://diffiwiki.pbwiki.com Jenny Rosene rosenej@wilmette39.org

22. Before you leave … • Please take a red half-sheet (post-assessment). • Fill it out. (No names on this one!) • Leave it in the box top marked Post-assessment & Reflection Sheets. • Go forth and group.