A week or so ago, I published a post outlining how a very popular grouping strategy many (most?) teachers use creates bullies. Check it out here. I got a lot of love and agreement in the comments and, separately, on social media. And luckily, I got some who didn’t necessarily agree. *whew* I sure don’t want to live inside my own echo-chamber. And some are hungry for other strategies that we might use instead of this bully-creator.

Hey Ginger, don’t just send out pot-shots from on-high. If you’re gonna shoot holes in the hull of our current approach, then at least send us a dad-gummed lifeboat!

Absolutely! We’re going to look at 3 highly-effective strategies for grouping kids in the PBL classroom (actually, any classroom), and I’ll also outline one more that I’ve found could possibly be the very best strategy for grouping kids, but it has a caveat added.This last +1 strategy could very likely get you fired.

There are a couple of important points I feel should accompany this post as well:

1. With group work, I try hard to help kids connect with others to help strengthen the classroom and the school. But in order to truly connect, we have to be ourselves,ergo, it needs to be a safe environment. We’ve got to be ok with showing our weird side to others. Because, let’s face it, many kids are already self-conscious and feel “weird.” And they try hard to hide that. But to me, weird actually meansunique. So I hit reality face-on, repeating “Everybody is somebody else’s weirdo. So let’s get over it and move on. Oh? You thought you were normal? How weird is that?!” Kids laugh and we do move on. We embrace and celebrate our work while focusing on strengths were kids gain confidence and trust in the learning process. And we begin to not only recognize that we’re all unique, we actually begin to value it. And that’s a good thing. “Weird” is good in a safe environment, especially when we call out that 800 lb gorilla of weirdness that every single one of us is trying to hide.
2. While I am trying to build community, not all students need to work in groups. Remember the value of uniqueness? Yeah, that applies to not having to work in groups all the time. But sometimes they do need others’ help because the work can be awfully tough out there on our own.

So now it’s on to the 3 (+1) strategies!

Strategy 1 — Ability grouping

To combat the high/medium/low ability group strategy that creates bullies (illustrated over here — seriously, go read it if you haven’t) one of the most effective ways to group kids is by ability. In this fashion, each learner is able to have specific interventions and instructional strategies laser-pinpointed and tailored to the needs of that group. I can be a much more effective teacher in meeting kids needs. And it addresses the Shelly/Ginger issue in the part 1 post.

But to leave the kids in only this type of grouping is wrong. We’d create the “haves” vs “the have-nots” and that’s no community-builder. At all. No, we need to find ways to get the kids to be heterogeneously grouped, but with a purpose beyond simply high/medium/low.

Strategy 2 — Interest grouping

How can we get our students together in mixed-ability groups? Group them based on interests. I’ll wager to say there are only a handful of topics that will engage every single learner in your classroom:

At the middle/high school levels, consider, cars, music, sports, women’s issues, social justice, wars/weaponry, fashion. That list has something on there to hook nearly every single learner in our classroom.
At the elementary level, consider animals, space, dinosaurs, cars, fashion, horses, insects, reptiles, music, dance, sports.

When we hook our content into topics of interest, kids come to their interest groups with confidence, excitement, and are willing to get involved and share. My favorite part is that most likely, all kids know things inside their areas of interest. Soon, kid(s) are seeing their peers in a new light! The kids that may otherwise be labeled as “not very bright” or are too “unique” are contributing value to the community on a near-equal level as their peers. This is definitely good for all!

Strategy 3 — Readiness grouping

This is a hybrid modification of ability grouping. The reality is that some kids come to us knowing a LOT about things that we’d never expect. I’ve had kids who might not be labeled as super-strong learners come to my WW1/WW2 classes knowing a TON of information due to video games they were playing. What shall I do, ignore that? Nope! I plop those kiddos right into the group of kids who learn quickly. Again, we’re seeing each other’s strengths and uniqueness in a very positive and useful light. And confidence continues to grow. Let’s do it!

Some of you might be catching on. Really, this is Differentiated Instruction 101. This is not ground-breaking.

…and now for the (+1) strategy that I recommend you NOT use. The one that will get you fired:

(+1) Strategy for grouping

FIRST: I do not recommend you use this strategy. Ever. Very few school environments are able to have such a strong relationship with parents and staff to sustain the bigger picture of this strategy. And if you’re a lone teacher, you might get fired, so don’t send anyone to me, saying I said you should do this. I don’t.

That being said, I had amazing success with this strategy with my students. Like medicine, though, we used it sparingly. And we kept our parents in the loop every single step of the way. If there was a concern, we dealt with it individually.

At the beginning of each year of our 1:1 laptop, Project-Based Learning school, I told the students that we were going to work in groups <insert audible collective groan> and that I would be watching them to see who were good group workers and who were bad group workers. That I would soon be putting good group workers with other good group workers <insert audible ‘yes’ from some kids and some very wide, shifty eyes from others>. Right there, they self-identified which type of group worker they were for me, but I told them they would have many chances to show me they had earned the right to be in the “good group worker” group. And we began the year working in interest groups and random groups (since I didn’t know them yet). I began to observe who worked well in groups and who were used to waiting for others to do all the work.

Soon, about 2 months into the year, it was time. We’d have a quick, 2-day project with low academic stakes (because this exercise wasn’t about academics, but rather social learning) coming up and I’d tell them I was grouping them into the way I promised: good group workers and bad group workers. When the work began, the good group workers were off like a shot, happy, relieved, and ZOOMING! The bad group workers sat and looked at each other, wondering which one was going to do the work. I positioned myself near that group, because after all, it’s not Lord of the Flies over here! I’ve got to be there to support and re-direct them as they learn how to do the right thing. There would be nothing and no one behind which to hide for these kiddos.

And if I’d done my job as a teacher, laying out an exciting, tasty, and high-interest project, eventually some could no longer resist, and would rise up and work. YES!! I call that a win! Love was showered all around on those kids and gentle support/pressure was still applied on those who’d not yet learned to take the steps forward.

I’d do this type of grouping 2-3 times a year, maximum. It was enough of a wake-up call to get kids to really do some metacognitive reflection about their own approaches and contributions to group work. And eventually, all my kids knew what it took to be good group workers. For some, it took a couple years to unlearn previously ingrained poor behavior. It’s ok. I’m old. I have patience. They’ll get there.

So why do I say this strategy will get you fired?

Because what kids hear isn’t “good group workers” and “bad group workers.”

Nope.

They hear “good kid” and “bad kid” even though I’d never said that.

You see why this can only be done in a loving, trusting environment that has a special (some might say “unique”) communication style with parents? There are schools out there like this. You all might consider it. You might not.

I’d say a typical K12 district had better never consider it, even if I do think it’s THE most effective way I’ve ever grouped kids to create true learners.

Thanks for reading this long post to the end. I’m looking forward to hearing from those of you who have successfully used these strategies before and for those who might still be renting the idea (not yet bought-in).

Somewhere, back in my archives, I have a post about utilizing contracts for group work. I’ll try to dig that out and dust it off.

Incidentally, ability grouping, aka “cluster grouping,” is NOT the same as “tracking.” Tracking is where we put kids into those leveled groups and never take them out, regardless of the subject or their advancement in school. That’s wrong.

Let’s re-think group work. This is an AWESOME post from a former student of mine who dropped out of school at age 16 to spend her days actually learning. And I could not be more proud of her for doing so and for being who she is today. Group Projects = Fail 
She’s pretty critical of using groups at all. I submit it for your own pondering.

In my PBL workshops, I’m often asked to share my favorite grouping strategies based on my 7 years of experience with Project Based Learning. It seems that grouping is a universal problem in any classroom, where, once groups are formed, one kid does all the work for him/herself while others are content to do anything but work.

As teachers, how do we combat that?

One strategy often used is to assign clear roles and responsibilities for each student to ensure that the work is fair and that each is doing her own part, right? Another might even be to ask students to evaluate and assign points to other group members, so each will be held accountable for working.

I wonder, though, if that truly solves the problem? And I also wonder if that level of intervention belongs in a PBL environment where we’re trying to get kids, who are fully capable of doing so, to decide to create roles for themselves (I’m thinking upper elementary through high school here).

Also, I notice that those strategies attempt to only address behavior issues. What are we doing for academic equity? How are we ensuring that each kid is learning all we expect her to?

I don’t know about you, but I was taught in college (19 years ago) that creating work groups with a HIGH, a MEDIUM, and a LOW student in each was the right and the fair thing to do. The idea is that the HIGH ability student can (re)teach and guide the lower-ability student, right? I see many teachers currently doing this. And I see that a very famous program also is pushing the same thing today.

But I’m going to tell you that there’s no faster way to tear your classroom culture apart than to group High/Medium/Low students together. Simply, I believe it’s wrong and quite the opposite of equitable.And I’ll tell you why…

So I admit that I’m not really the most physically fit person in the world…stick with me on this story…
I have a teacher-friend we’ll call Shelly (not her real name). Shelly is a good person and she’s a truly good friend. And she’s very, very physically fit. She loves the gym and fitness. So it makes sense for me to go to her for help in getting more fit, right? Shelly agrees to help me and we set a date to meet at the gym.

The day we meet up, Shelly is ready to go! I’m hesitant, but know this is the right thing to do. We start off with, according to Shelly, some “light aerobic” warm ups. Pretty soon it’s obvious that “light aerobic” to me and “light aerobic” to Shelly is not the same thing at all. I’m already huffing and puffing 10 minutes in and have worked up more than just a light bead of sweat on my upper lip. Oh, who’m I kidding? I’m already sweating through my shirt.

And I look over at Shelly. She smiles at me, continuing her story about … I don’t even remember what. I do remember noting that she’s talking easily and not sweating at all. She even has lung power to laugh and to offer words of encouragement for me. Yay.

So it goes on.

Throughout the entire hour, Shelly is being supportive and I’m trying to hold my breath and my sweat, embarrassed by how terribly out of shape I am. Looking at my friend, I’m starting to hate on her. And I’m starting to hate my time at the gym, realizing this whole thing may have been a mistake. Shelly’s still smiling and not even breaking stride in her peppy and perky breathing. And there’s not one piece of sweat anywhere on her! Did I see her just send an empathetic smile at me during the final push? Ugh. That’s all I need. Pity.

I hate her.

Ah, that’s not true. If I didn’t like her, I’d punch her. But I am thinking about it. It’s just a good thing she’s nice.

At the end of the workout, we walk out to the parking lot. I get in my car, still breathing and still damp (dripping). Shelly offers still more words of encouragement and tells me she’ll text me to set up our next exercise date. I say yeah, trying to hide my embarrassment and my hatred for her perkiness. I drive away. Shelly smiles and waves, watching me go, then goes back into the gym to get her own workout.

See, she didn’t gain any personal benefit from our workout together. She’s just my cheerleader and I hate her for it.

You see, I think that story of Shelly and me illustrates precisely the physicalmanifestation of what we do to kids academically. We create haters in our classrooms by putting High with Low. We don’t mean to, but it happens every single time.

Luckily for me, Shelly is encouraging and friendly. What if she wasn’t? How vulnerable am I then? How likely is it that I’ll ever want to work hard with her?

And what if I wasn’t nice? What’s the dynamic now if I’m a kid who is ready to persecute Shelly for being a know-it-all as my own defense mechanism?

You see, I think that often, High/Medium/Low ability groupings tear our classroom dynamics apart more than we know. And I think we create “Miss Bossy-pants” and “The Log” kids and then WE blame THEM for being that way, when we set up the situation for them to be put into those roles!

It hurts my heart.

But I do have ideas for how we can move forward. Where Shelly can get an appropriate workout and how I can as well.

Because each kid deserves to be:

1. taught by a highly-qualified teacher and not another student, and
2. to be appropriately challenged at their own levels of readiness.

My next post will share my 3+1 strategies for grouping kids for a PBL classroom. But until then, what would you do for Shelly? For Ginger?

So you want your students to master your class content faster?

Here’s my proposal:
Have less drill and practice (I’m looking at you, worksheet wranglers and you, test-preppers).

Instead, we will create higher personal stakes for the students and I’m not talking grades or staying after school/in from recess.

You see, It all comes down to personal motivation. Grades and GPA are simply not motivation enough for many to do well on the worksheets. And even less motivation to truly understand and master the content. Grades/GPA, and punishments motivate kids to hate school.

“What would motivate them to want to master this skill?”

Start your curriculum mapping and lesson planning with that simple question and you’ll begin to be a true educator because your students will truly be learning.
(hint: a good start is Project Based Learning)

Listen, I get it. We all want our tweens and teens to be better readers. Better writers. Better thinkers. So we ask them to write in our classes. We teach them to “write across the curriculum.” We teach them the strategies that good writers use. They practice writing all kinds of writing styles. They write and write. Yet so many struggle with their basic writing skills. So we provide remedial support. We take them back to even more basic skills building. We spend an extra hour a day breaking down all the tiny components it takes to be a good writer.

And do they become better writers? Some do. Many just learn to hate writing, hate school, and solidly label themselves as “stupid.”

And we do the same with reading. We do the same with math.

And we have hundreds of PhD’s who are developing more ways to do it with more intensity. With more fidelity. And we have thousands of consultants writing books and manuals about how to do that to your kids, today, in 5 easy steps.

I’m sorry if I don’t really have the faith that those strategies will work so well.

I wonder…

I wonder if we stopped with the microscopes and needling and the … whatever else you want to label it …
I wonder if we went back to something way more simplistic. More basic. And this is going to sound dumb, I’m sure.

I wonder if instead of having kids practice writing/reading/math, if we could instead get them to be writers. To be readers. To be math.

*duh, Ginger. That’s what all that other stuff is for*

But no, seriously. What if kids saw themselves as Hemmingway…as Vonnegut…as King…as Wilde…as Woolfe…Rowling…Card…Collins…Meyer (yeah, of Twilight fame…you may not like her style, but if a kid does, maybe it’s not for us to judge).

Sure, maybe the lifestyles of those writers may not be exactly the ones we want our kids to emulate, but the reality is, we don’t want to be copycats of others. We want to be our own best version of ourselves, right?

But to begin to imagine ourselves as a writer? To consider how a writer might live? To think about how their day is scheduled? Kids would no longer be students, per se, but instead, writers. To learn to seek, see, find, and develop inspiration. And I’m not talking about holding a Writer’s Workshop here, although that’s a great start. Let’s take it further.

What would a day/week/month/year in the life of a mathematician look like? An engineer? A statistician? An entrepreneur? What conditions would have to exist for kids to not “do math” but to BE one of these people? To pretend? To imagine? To become?

What would it be like to not just learn about science, but to actually BE a geologist? A botanist? An agricultual breeder? A biomedical engineer? A bio informatics scientist?

I want my tweens and teens to play at these careers now. To decide which mantle might fit them best. Maybe we’re talking about re-thinking schools in the most radical way…creating mini apprenticeships? But certainly we can begin with regular and sustained job shadows. Sure, maybe we don’t have all those careers in our locality. Maybe as a teacher, I don’t know how to help kids replicate all of the higher-level careers.

I can’t say I know how to make this all happen. But I wonder if we might start with writing. Helping kids to BE writers.

Looking for some help? Kevin Honeycutt and I have developed some curriculum supports that might help. Check out our LifePractice PBL cards as a great starting place to help kids imagine how to BE.

When do we assess learning in a PBL classroom?

Assessment of student learning is an on-going process, from formal feedback during the teachers’ project planning and preparation, to observations during the launch event, to individual conversations with every student, and all throughout the project.

And in order to do this, we must move our minds from thinking only about pencil/paper tests. While it can include those, true assessment of learning is much deeper than that.

Teachers move like hunter-gatherer nomads, searching for each morsel of mastery that the ripe student mind has produced. We’re constantly looking, digging, and searching for evidence of learning in whatever form it presents itself. We assess content knowledge. We assess skills development. We assess their growth as human beings in this world.

So when do we assess?

The answer is we assess every single moment we are with our students.

For more specific examples, check out my LiveBinder called Beyond Multiple Guess: Rubric and Assessment Options for PBL. It is positively full of ideas for your PBL classroom!

From time to time, we receive questions about Project/Problem Based Learning implementation as teachers take their first tentative steps into a project, or even as this teacher has, gone full-time PBL in all of her classes! Kudos to this bold educator!

Question:
Is there an advantage or is it appropriate in PBL for me to research and share info?  One of the students and I were talking about the Olympic flame and whether it “never goes out.”  Neither of us had the definite answer but it was a topic that I wanted answered for myself but the answer was not vital to the project.  My inclination is that I should research and share – to model enthusiasm for learning.  Or is that something I should just have encouraged her to research and keep the info to myself?

I’m not sure that I’m understanding PBL as well as I thought.


Answer:
There are many flavors to PBL, so I always default to enthusiasm and Learning. So if you feel that you need to dig in and work alongside a kid, do it! I have. A lot. Doing so role models curiosity and, as you said, enthusiasm. Tell her you don’t know and that you’re going to look stuff up, too, and you’re looking forward to hearing what she has found.

If, once you get your heads back together, she has brought info back from your independent searches, you can feel confident to share the info you found freely, comparing notes, and giving TONS of high-fives and love. Such an awesome scenario!Be sure to have her share her info before you share yours. This will give you some options in case she hasn’t brought any research back.
If she has found nothing and you’re guessing it was perhaps due to a lack of effort, then you can tell her that you’ve buried a lie or untruth in your information and she needs to find that lie or risk putting out some bad info.  Plan the lie in advance in case you might need it.Or instead of a lie, or if you think that she has put effort in and simply wasn’t able to find the right places to look, drop her some good links to look at–ones that you know have the answers. Or hand her a book with a few encouraging words.In this way, she can still have success through her own effort and you’re still  providing high-quality, student-centered learning by scaffolding and role modeling growth!


A mantra of mine comes from Dr. Sylvia Rimm:
"The surest path to high self-esteem is to be successful at something one perceived would be difficult. Each time we steal a student’s struggle, we rob them of an opportunity to build higher self-esteem. Students must experience success with difficult tasks to feel capable and competent."

The takeaway:
Kids who aren’t experienced being learners sometimes need a little extra love and support figuring out how to shift away from the role of Student (being told what-to, when-to, how-to) to the role of Learner (knowing how to suss out answers). And some kids who are great learners, but who have hit a sticking point in their work, might just need a little help getting unstuck.

Knowing how to balance it all is the (he)art of teaching.