Flexible Grouping, Flexible Teaching!

On my journey to differentiated instruction, I know one non-negotiable of DI is strategic flexible grouping. During the past few years, I have worked diligently on grouping my students, but I know I need to improve the strategic part of my grouping process. 

(By the way, I use the "Touch Blur" app to blur students' faces.)

I also learned that differentiation doesn't always mean group work, nor does it mean that groups are based solely on ability levels.  Some lessons require "whole group" instruction, and then we can move into individual, partner, or small group work as necessary.

Types of Groups:	And groups may be based on...
Whole Class	Readiness
Small Groups	Interest
Pairs	Similar Learning Profiles
Individual Work	Random Selection
	Choice

In addition, I learned you must establish a community in your classroom to make the different groups most effective. Students must be willing to talk with each other, take risks together, and know how to truly collaborate on their work.  To help with the community building in class, as soon as I change my groups, I ask students to introduce themselves and answer a question that requires collaboration.  (Rate yourself from 1-10 on how you're feeling today, and average all of your ratings.  Come to a consensus about the best thing to eat in the cafeteria.)  I love Sarah's idea for establishing group norms, and you can download her posters from her blog.  And finally, let's not forgot about the classroom management aspect of the group process. When working on building community and flexible grouping, it's so important to have those procedures in place about moving desks, turning in work, getting materials, ...

To help students understand that grouping is a norm in our class, at the beginning of last year (and I will repeat) we did a quick "line up" activity.  I had huge classes, so the students actually remained seated, but I participated, too. I projected the list shown here, and we went through the items one by one. It is more effective when you can demonstrate a line up and have your kids move from one end of the spectrum to the other, but they got the point by their self-assessments. After we went through the entire list, I asked questions such as who had a chance to rate themselves as a 4 or 5?  And who rated themselves a 1 or 2 at least once?   The final reflection: in our class this year, there will be times when you will be an expert and times when you will be a novice. You may sometimes be grouped with like team members, but sometimes, I will want you to "stretch," and you may be grouped outside of your comfort zone.  (Here's an opportunity to share a bit about making mistakes, grit, and growth mindset!)

The line-up activity is great for establishing the understanding of groups based on readiness, but since I'm on a quest this year to group by learning profile, I think (hope!) it will work for the idea of any changing groups.

Unfortunately, I only strategically grouped a few times last year, but it was a great victory for me when a student walked in and asked, "Do you want us to sit in our CAP groups or our random groups?"  So at least I'm getting the grouping thing down a bit better.  Another bit of great feedback--an end of year note included the comment, "I learned to collaborate with my peers, some of whom I had never talked to before."

Unsolicited advice: if you want to start changing up your class, try random groups, but make certain you include the aspects of community, group norms, and class procedures.  If  you're looking for ways to try random grouping, there are so many available resources.  Our science teachers recommended this site to create random groups, and I found a collection of sites to create groups here. On this post, Beth at Algebra's Friend also suggested Super Teacher Tools to generate groups, and this site provides no-tech options for grouping students.

So now I have the grouping component ready to try again, and I really want to focus on differentiating by learning profile...next steps: put the two together and work on specific lesson components!



Any suggestions for creating a community of learners in your classroom?  How do you create groups?

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Classroom Management and #ASCDCTE14

Post #3 about the ASCD Conference, and I'm ready to reflect on goodies from one awesome session...

A large part of my job as Instructional Specialist is to support our new teachers, and a top concern for new teachers is classroom management.  In addition, I support all of our teachers on implementing school and district initiatives, and when we're talking about flexible grouping with differentiation, PBLs, and managing technology and devices, we must also have conversations about classroom management and procedures.  It seems like we assume veteran teachers have the management part down, but that's not necessarily the case; therefore, it was a no-brainer that I attended a session on classroom management.

(Side note: I didn't realize that many of the presenters would be pushing their own websites, materials, and books at this conference, but because this message and the presenter were so amazing, I'll include those links!)

If you ever have an opportunity to see Grace Dearborn present, run to her session!  She had our room of at least 300 people completely engaged, laughing, sharing, and accepting her every word as golden.  It's kind of sad that she is no longer in the classroom because I imagine she worked magic with her students...but at least she is sharing her wisdom with others.

Her session was Conscious Classroom Management, and the goal of her session was to provide "Stuff you can use."  Mission accomplished! She shared a few oldies but goodies, but it's always good to hear reminders about these strategies:

• 2 x 10 -- for your most challenging student(s), if you spend 2 minutes a day for 10 days in a row having a personal, non-academic conversation with that student, behavior will improve.  If a student is absent (ill, suspended, etc.) for several days, you must start over with the 10 days.  Be consistent as possible.
• "Procedures Precede Content" -- teach and reteach your procedures, and again, be consistent. (She used the example of the safety procedures on airplanes.  Have you ever not heard the flight attendants go over the airplane rules with visuals, demos, and talk-throughs??)  She even provides sample procedure quizzes on her website.  Another suggestion: if you have trouble with the consistency part, i.e. you don't always make your students raise their hands, give yourself a visual, such as a picture of a raised hand, posted in the back of the room where you'll see it.  Also, really spend the time in class to practice the procedures.  For example, require your students to move their desks into groups of 4 within 20 seconds.  Get out the stop watch, make them practice, explain how it must be done, and make them practice again. (One of her engaging strategies: she told us we had "32 seconds" or "17 seconds" or "2.18 minutes" to share--it was never a round number, which really amused me for some reason.)

The new stuff...she was all about visual cues for procedures and management, and that idea was such an a-ha! She took pictures of what she wanted and had those images projected or posted around the room.

• On test days, as students entered the room, she projected a picture of a desk that was cleared except for a pencil and calculator.
• For science lab days, she had a picture projected with all equipment needed for the lab (goggles, lab book, pen, calculator, 2 beakers).
• On her bookshelves, she had two pictures.  The "YES" picture showed her books in order, spines vertical, supplies in the correct containers, everything neat.  The "NO" picture showed the same bookcase with the textbooks mixed together, supplies thrown around, loose papers on the shelves, etc. (She also used this strategy for her youngsters' toy chest at home.)
• A funny: for the elementary teachers, Grace shared the struggle of dealing with kids who tattle. To remedy that, a teacher posted a picture of a giant ear on the wall, so when kids started to tattle, she said, "Tell it to the ear!"  The teacher said after recess, there might be a line of kids waiting to "tell the ear" what had happened.  Grace also said a high school government teacher posted a big picture of President Obama, and when his seniors started to complain, he said, "Tell it to the President!" and he said kids would actually talk to the poster! :)

Grace was also all about creating rubrics with her visuals, and then she could tell students they needed to get from a "3" to a "5."  She had students demo each number on her rubric, she took pictures of each scenario, labeled each picture with the appropriate number, and then posted or showed pictures when necessary.

• For high school students, she had an issue of kids packing up before the end of the period, so she created a 1 - 5 rubric for her end of the period procedures.  A "1" was where kids were lined up at the door, ready to leave.  For a "3," some kids were seated, some were standing, some had backpacks on, some students were still working.  A "5" was the ideal situation, and kids were still seated with work on their desks.  She posted the pictures around her door frame, and some days had to say, "I see most of you are at a 3, but I need you to be a 5 before you are dismissed!"  Kids could simply look at the photographs to see what they needed to change.  
• For her elementary example, she created a similar rubric for kids lining up in the hallways.  This document shows her photos and rubric, plus it gives a couple other examples of using visuals for classroom management.

Added bonus: the images of the expectations would be so useful for our English Language Learners!  We have a large ESL population, so I think this strategy would really help those kiddos understand.  

Another side note: I do not have my own classroom and float into two different classrooms, but it would be easy to keep the photos on my iPad and display them when necessary.

Any other favorite classroom management tips?  Have you ever used visuals or a rubric to help your students learn your class procedures?

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