Induction tutor materials
Training session - grouping pupils effectively
Duration: 75 minutes
Session objectives
Learn that:
- 4.9. Paired and group activities can increase pupil success, but to work together effectively pupils need guidance, support and practice.
- 4.10. How pupils are grouped is also important; care should be taken to monitor the impact of groupings on pupil attainment, behaviour and motivation.
- 5.5. Flexibly grouping pupils within a class to provide more tailored support can be effective, but care should be taken to monitor its impact on engagement and motivation, particularly for low attaining pupils.
Learn how to:
Group pupils effectively, by:
- 5m. Applying high expectations to all groups, and ensuring all pupils have access to a rich curriculum.
- 5n. Changing groups regularly, avoiding the perception that groups are fixed.
- 5o. Ensuring that any groups based on attainment are subject specific.
How to prepare for the session
Read the ECT’s self-study materials for this topic.
Session structure:
Introduction to the session (5 minutes)
Explain that this training session builds on knowledge developed through the self-directed study materials and mentor sessions. It also builds on the learning they completed in Year 1, particularly how pupils learn.
Reflecting on experiences of group work (15 minutes)
Much has changed over the years about how we think pupils learn best.
Pupils need to spend time working on their own and independently. Research also shows that collaborative working supports pupils to develop social skills, and to achieve good learning outcomes.
Think-pair-share: What has been your experience of group work so far?
Give ECTs the opportunity to discuss and share their experiences and tips.
ECTs might have wanted to do a lot of group work but struggled to do so because of behaviour.
Some ECTs may have done group work successfully. Ask them to share:
- how they introduced the group work activity?
- how many times have they tried it?
- how did they decide who was in each group? - what was the group task?
Emphasise that while there’s evidence to support the effectiveness of collaborative work, it does not happen by accident.
Teachers must design effective group work, and teach pupils how to do it.
Developing success criteria for effective group work (25 minutes)
Explain that teachers must share success criteria with pupils to help them perform group work effectively. Criteria should set expectations about how pupils should behave, and how they can work effectively together.
Ask ECTs to work together in groups to define a set of success criteria for effective group work.
It might be useful to group ECTs into subjects or phases so they can come up with an activity that works for them.
You can use these examples if needed:
- measuring and recording heights and weights of objects in maths
- developing a piece of fictional writing in English or literacy
- carrying out an experiment in science
- practising skills as a group in PE
- composing a piece of music
- doing a group artwork
- exploring different causes of World War I in history
- investigating different sources of renewable energy in geography
- writing a presentation on causes of the Cold War in A level politics
- small group play activities in early years
Prompts include:
- what are the attainment goals or task-specific success criteria?
- how do you want pupils to interact with each other, and how will they achieve this?
- how will you ensure that pupils take individual responsibility for the work they need to carry out in the group?
- how could you involve your pupils in developing success criteria?
- how will you monitor what the group is doing to make sure the criteria are being met?
Ask ECTs to share and discuss their thoughts with the group.
Grouping pupils flexibly (25 minutes)
Share this information:
Flexibly grouping pupils within a class is valuable because it allows you to tailor your support. However, it is crucial to monitor how it is going. If you keep groups fixed for long periods, especially if they are related to prior attainment, this can demotivate pupils who think they are in a lower-attaining group.
Even if you teach in ‘sets’ in your school, it is important to remember that there will still be big differences between pupils.
Any groupings that you create that are based on attainment need to be subject specific. If you are a primary school teacher, this means avoiding having a ‘top table’ that stays the same regardless of subject. In secondary schools, this is more challenging since your school may take a certain approach to setting pupils. Even if this is the case, it is important to mix groupings up within your class to avoid the idea that attainment is static.
Ask ECTs to work in pairs or groups to review the following information:
A) Homogenous or within-class attainment groupings.
This means pupils of very similar prior attainment level working together for specific activities or topics such as literacy. This might involve pupils of similar levels of current attainment being grouped together on specific tables for example, but all pupils being taught by their usual teacher and support staff and following the same curriculum (EEF 2018).
The aim of this type of grouping is to match tasks, activities and support to pupils’ current capabilities, so that all pupils have an appropriate level of challenge. This might enable you to spend more time with lower-attainment pupils. The evidence on within-class attainment grouping indicates that it is likely to be beneficial for all learners, providing an average benefit of three months’ additional progress. However, there appears to be less benefit for lower-attaining pupils than for others. In the UK, within-class attainment grouping tends to be more common in primary than in secondary schools (EEF, 2018).
B) Heterogeneous or mixed-attainment groupings.
This means that pupils of diverse abilities are grouped together. This might allow for within-group scaffolding to take place, i.e. higher-attainment pupils are able to provide support to lower-attainment pupils. There are some known positive effects for higher-attainment pupils of taking on this role.
Ask ECTs to discuss:
- does their school use setting?
- do they tend to keep groups the same within their lessons, or do they mix groups up regularly?
- do they tend to use within-class attainment groups or mixed-attainment groups?
- why have they made their choices?
- what are the main challenges of teaching mixed-attainment groups?
- what are the main benefits of teaching mixed-attainment groups?
Share this Year 6 flexible grouping case study:
"In a typical lesson, I use a combination of individual, paired and group work.
"Pupils are in a seating plan because that’s my school’s policy and I do find it helps with my classroom routines. However, I review my seating plan each half term and make adjustments where necessary.
"I use Talk Partners in my classroom – this is where before I ask pupils to answer a question, I give them an opportunity to discuss with their Talk Partner first. Usually, this is the person who is sitting next to them, but as I said, I review the pairings on a half-termly basis and do switch things up so that pupils get the opportunity to do Talk Partners with other pupils.
"For paired written work, this isn’t automatically done with the person the pupil is sat next to. I think first of all carefully about what it is that I want pupils to do and then pair them up. For example, I recently asked pupils to complete a practice SATs paper and I put pupils into pairs where one of the pair was a higher-attaining pupil and one a lower. The higher-attaining pupil acted as a ‘coach’ to the lower-attaining pupil and they completed the task together.
"I often use group work in my lessons but I had to work hard to teach my class how to do it effectively and they still sometimes get it wrong! Again, I think carefully about what the task is and devise my groups from there. I tend to put pupils into groups rather than allow them to self-select for this reason.
"Recently, I taught a lesson on different kinds of environments and put pupils into a home and an away team. The home team was made up of four pupils of mixed attainment – each pupil was numbered 1 to 4 and they had to go and work with an away team for a portion of the lesson on a specific environment, for example, the ocean.
"The away teams were based on pupil prior attainment. This way, higher-attaining pupils got an opportunity to work together - I scaffolded their resources less and gave them some more challenging questions to consider.
"I was able to work with a group of lower-attaining pupils, which meant I hadn’t needed to spend ages scaffolding their resources in advance - I was the scaffold! After a period of time, the pupils had to return back to their home group and teach each other about what they’d found out - I scaffolded this using worksheets and question stems.
" The pupils had to create a presentation about the different environments they had learned about, which they shared with the class. At the end, I did a mini-quiz with pupils individually - this helped each pupil to see that they needed to take an active role in the work."
Ask ECTs to work in pairs or groups to discuss:
- in what different ways are pupils grouped?- what different strategies has the teacher used?
- what are the implications for your own practice?
- do you have any effective strategies that you can share with each other?
Planning for action (5 mins)
Ask ECTs:
- what will you now do differently in your practice?
- what will you put into action in your lessons?