Math Rotations – Creating Groups

Today’s focus in my Math Rotations blog series is on how I group students for Math Rotations.  This post will cover how I group students, number of groups, and how I use flexible grouping for Math Rotations.

How I Group Students:

I group students for math groups using a pre-test.  Last year I created pre-tests for each large unit I teach, for example, place value, addition, subtraction, graphing, shapes, etc. and use that to form my groups.

Prior to teaching the standards and skills for a set unit, students take the pre-test.  When I give the pre-test out I explain that this is just for me to help teach them.  This pre-test does not go in the grade book it just shows me what they know.  The positive to using a pre-test is I get a read on where everyone is at prior to teaching the content.  I can quickly identify my students who have never seen the material before and also ones who have a solid grasp on it already and need extension activities.  This made my teaching life so much easier and made it even easier to form groups for Math Rotations.

After grading the pre-test (remember not for the gradebook, just for me) I could quickly identify what my students needed in regards to the specific skill.  I would then form my four groups for Math Rotations.  Some math units I would have two lower groups, a medium group, and a high group.  Some skills I would have one low group, one medium group, and two high groups.  (My Group 1 tends to be my struggling kiddos, Group 4 tends to be my high kiddos, and Groups 2 and 3 can depend based on the content and student’s needs).   Using the pre-test to help divide my class into groups helped ensure that I was tailoring my instruction to what my students actually needed.  I still teach the standards, I still make sure my students master the standards, but because of the pre-test I was able to quickly see where I needed to start for each child/group.

Another key thing to keep in mind and an advantage to using these is the groups are flexible.  Billy might be in Group 1 for addition because he really struggles with strategies, but he might be in Group 4 for geometry because he understands shapes.  We don’t want to pigeon hole kids into groups, but we do want to identify where each child is at for different skills.