Looking back at the Unit Plan from ED 605, I would need
to consider the academic abilities of my students when determining how to group
them. I had not considered this when I was initially working on the unit plan,
but I see the importance of the collaboration between and among students of
varying abilities. Previously, I had always believed that homogeneous grouping
of students was most beneficial, and in some cases, it is. However, I now
realize that sometimes it is just as important to pair stronger students with developing
students, including English learners, struggling readers, and special needs
students so that the progressing students can have a model of either the
language or a different way of thinking and approaching a problem or discussion.
In my classroom, I would purposefully vary the types of groups that I assemble
over the course of the unit so that everyone got a chance to work with different
types of students, as opposed to making the groupings permanent for the school year.
(McLaughlin, 2015) . At certain points, I
would deliberately make homogenous groups so that students of similar academic
levels could work together and get the most from the groupings. In addition, the
homogeneous groupings discourage the weaker group members from getting accustomed
to relying solely on the work of a stronger group member. During the homogenous
groupings, I would walk around the room and check on the groups, paying the
most attention to the weakest groups because they might not have anyone in
their group who catches on to certain points that other groups might find
obvious. (Timson, 2014) Then, at other
points during the lesson, I would group the students in a homogenous manner so
that the weaker group members do not get tempted to rely solely on the work of
another group member.
I
would need to consider each student’s reading and writing skills when deciding
on the groupings because if the class contains a large disparity between student
reading levels, then I would want to have the students work in small groups of
threes and/or pairs. Within each pair or small group, I would combine a
struggling reader with a student who is stronger in reading or has more knowledge
on the topic of solving systems of equations.
Some
potential problems that might arise from poorly thought out groupings would
include the weaker students getting frustrated easily and feeling discouraged.
For instance, in the case of a Jeopardy game or a competitive academic event,
if the strongest students always won, the weaker students might begin to feel
defeated and hopeless. Thus, in this case, it would be best to use
heterogeneous groupings. Also, if there are a large number of “high-level
thinkers” in the class, they might grow bored of whole-group activities that go
on for too long. For this reason, it is a good idea to first teach a new
concept to the whole class and then use small homogenous groups to allow the
students to practice the concept or extend to a more challenging application of
the concept. Finally, if the groups are heterogeneous for too long, the weaker
students might not get enough time to fully grasp a concept because either they
were too afraid to ask their questions in front of their peers or they hide
behind the stronger students and I would have no way of knowing how much they
really know about the topic. For all of these reasons, it is a good idea to
thoroughly consider the purpose of the activity and the types of learners in
the classroom at all points during the lesson.
References
Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom Strategies for
Interactive Learning (4th ed.). Newark, DE: International Reading
Association.
McLaughlin, M. (2015). Content Area Reading: Teaching
and Learning for College and Career Readiness. Upper Saddle River:
Pearson.
Timson, K. (2014). The Importance of Homogeneous
Grouping. Retrieved from Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/73426089
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