Group teaching?

Question

When you have a class and you want to group them into smaller groups, do you do this by their level of understanding of the particular subject. For example: Do you group all the students that understand it together?

Answer 1

In my 2nd grade classroom we group them for reading. There are reading groups that they attend everyday. There are 4 different levels and 1 teacher per level.

Level 0

is a special ed level for students who cannot or can barley read. There is special support in this level.

Level 1

is a level that is low and for students who are not strong readers but can read and have some understanding of books

Level 2

is the average level. The average 2nd grade reader goes into this level.

Level 3

is advanced and for people who need more of a challenge and are very fluent readers.

We also have math groups

Group 1 and 2. Group one is the special ed. Group 2 is where all the other students go and 3 students go out for extra curricular math.

Answer 2

Grouping the students depends on your purpose in grouping.  

Grouping across ability groups is done to support the less able students in developing understanding.  An example of this would be a map lesson in social studies.  

Grouping with like ability is done to increase understanding at a specific level.  Small groups for guided reading are ability based.  

Sometimes random groups work fine.  This can be done when doing an activity that everyone is part of  such as a science lesson or experiment.

Answer 3

I think that you should mix the groups. It has been proven that kids sometimes learn better from other kids. If you have a high achiever, a low achiever, and a couple of middle achievers in each group, then they can help each other. The idea behind group work is for them to cooperate. If you have all the lowest in one group, how will they be able to help each other??