Ability Grouping - Part 2

Hopefully you all got a chance to read about what I did last year for ability grouping. If you did not you can read about that here.  I am so excited about my new idea for ability grouping, but I must keep reminding myself... this is a plan, and in teaching youngsters many times your plan does not work for those group of students so you must adjust. So... even though today it makes great sense, when I meet my students I will need to remind myself that I must adjust it if it does not work for these friends!

Last year, being a new teacher I attended my districts "New Teacher" training every Tuesday. One of the most valuable days I spent in that conference room was when they introduced an idea they had seen at a Kagan conference. They were grouping mats... I immediately fell in love with the idea and wanted to implement them in my classroom. But, I just couldn't. It works best when the students are sitting in  groups of four where they are able to face each other. For my group of kiddos last year, old-fashion rows was my only option. They just could not handle groups, no matter how hard we tried. We literally changed our desks all the time trying to get away from the rows, and we always went back to them.

This year, I want to do groups so bad. Part of me just can't see little second graders sitting in rows. So I am going to cross my fingers and hope this works!

This is a "cute" version of the Kagan mat that I created and will plan on using this year for my classroom. I would go through and tell you how they introduced and used the mat at my PD, but if you want to know about that.. I am sorry... you'll have to find a Kagan training on that.

I will however, tell you how I want to use it this year, please understand this is personal opinion about what I think might be best for my students:

First of all, I have to preface this by letting you know that I will be using the 2 sisters Daily 5 and CAFE instruction in my classroom for the majority of my reading block. With that being said, I have done my fair share of reading to prepare for implementing this correctly. A few days ago, I had an ah-ha moment upon reading this question, "why not start grouping kids together by strategy need rather than level?" Just think about it.... You can be a low student in reading but for different reasons. Student 1 might not know how to decode the works, Student 2 can read fluently and with accuracy but does not check for understanding. Both of these students could potentially be classified as low. But if I go over to work with my ability group, am I going to have the same conversation with student 1 as I will student 2? No. But, why... aren't they both low? Looking back on my ability grouping last year I thought if I put a medium student next to a low student the medium student could "help them" when I wasn't available. But really... could they? I mean how do I expect my medium student to understand what my other student's strategy need is? In an ideal world it would be nice to have mini-teachers who naturally say, "well remember when Ms. Peterson taught us about ____. She said when you have this problem you can try this...". But during that time that they are coaching their peer they are missing out on time they could be practicing their own strategy or talking with their groups about AH-HA's that they had while working on their strategy!

Last year valuable learning time could have been more valuable.

 
If I am the student who can't complete a retell after reading 10 words, sitting next to a student who can read a chapter book and sound amazing but still can't complete a retell is going to be more motivating to me, then sitting me next to a student who can't figure out that the word they keep stumbling on is "cat". They both see that they are working on the same thing, but their strengths are shining so much more than when we put them in ability groups based on high, medium, low (because let's be honest, no matter how color coded we get, no matter how many fancy names we can think of besides high, medium, low... the students know!). 

Last year I missed out on some opportunities to really allow students to form teams for learning, increase their motivation and let their strengths shine.

This year it's changing:

Our school switches kids throughout the grade level for reading. I will have a different set of kids for reading and math which will help in my grouping/seating.

This year, I will take the time to assess students to find out what they need. I will determine which strategies they will need to work on.

For reading I will use the strategies as outlined in the CAFE book (check for understanding, cross checking, etc). 

For math, it's still debatable... But I promise... once I figure it out, I'll update you!

Meanwhile, I will also try to make sure those groups include a variety of students with different talents and strengths (which will come in handy for partner work/group work) because like ability grouping by level they will be able to offer their strengths for the good of the group.

As I sit down to write this and figure out how I am going to incorporate the Kagan inspired mat, it changes line by line and is already completely different from what I was going to write about yesterday.  So I have decided that I will wait until I get into the classroom, and place by students to figure out how I can put the other grouping options to work (face partners), A/Bs, shoulder partners, etc. But I am sure you can already see why I love the mats... There is 4 opportunities for grouping right there and the students will always know their position when you call out a certain group. 

I will be posting a lot about how this works throughout the year! Keep following to see what changes I make to it! :)