Grouping by Chance

Grouping by Chance

For your next session of group discussions of teamwork, try these fun methods for grouping your students by chance:

Deck of Cards
Randomly pass out playing cards or Uno cards and have students group according to number, colour, suit, or poker hand.

Photo Credit: ClipartMountain

Picture Puzzle Pieces
Cut photos or postcards into pieces and distribute. Students with the pieces from the same picture will form a group.

Appointment Book
Give students a page out of a daily planner/appointment book. Have students make and record “appointments” with their classmates. When you call out the times, students will “meet” the people for their appointment time.

Text Reconstruction
Take texts—stories, poems, diagrams, etc. and cut them into pieces before distributing them to students. Students who have pieces of the same text will form a group.

Cast of Characters
Write down the names of characters from well-known stories on individual cards and hand them out to students. Students with the same type of character (e.g. antagonist, protagonist, etc.) will group together.

Synonyms, Antonyms, Homonyms
Write down words on individual cards and hand them out to the class. Students will find a partner whose card is a synonym, antonym, or homonym, etc. of their word.

Grouping by Chance is taken from Surviving and Thinking: Making classroom management and organization work for you and your students by Maria Carty, published by Pembroke Publishers.