Flexible Grouping
Flexible Grouping Techniques
| Grouping technique | How.. | Use when …. | Example |
| Random | This is completely arbitrary: have students group themselves by like titles or by given colors. | Placement is primarily for management and forming groups of equal size. Also good to use when you are trying to get students to know one another. | Students choose a title from a bag you circulate and group themselves by like title. There are enough titles to form groups of equal size. |
| Achievement | Use performance on a reading measure; students with similar scores are placed in the same group | You want students to read literature selections at their instructional levels as determined by the reading measure. | When completing a folktale unit, students are directed to read a folktale that corresponds to their general reading levels. |
| Social (cooperative) | Group students according to specific social skills: leaders. Followers’ heterogeneous in that each has different skills. | Students need to function in different roles; students learn different roles from one another and work together to complete a group task. | Students read a script and glean important information to share with the class. When preparing, one person reads, another takes notes, another draws. One child is the group spokesperson.
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| Interest | This group is based on an interest survey. Assign students to a group or have them assign themselves to a group based on interest in a topic. | Student interest is the main motivating force for learning about a topic. | Students who are interested in a favorite author or illustrator come together to learn more about him or her. |
| Task | Those who are successful in completing given types of activities are grouped together | You want to enable students to use their strongest modality to show understanding | Children who find drawing enjoyable are grouped together to construct scenery for the reenactment of a story. |
| Knowledge of subject | Students with knowledge of a given subject or hobby are grouped together | You want students to see likenesses among one another and share information. | Students who are interested in baseball cards are grouped together to share the statistics of their favorite players. |
| Flexible Grouping in reading – understanding flexible grouping basics by Scholastic Professional Books, 1998 |
