Teams
In order for students to work cooperatively they must be placed in teams. Teams include four students (preferably). Students are numbered 1-4 and are either A or B. Teams should be heterogenous, mixed racial, multiple intelligences, and various abilities. Team mats are helpful to remind students of their number and letter. I created team mats on Microsoft Word and insert our school mascot in the center of the mat. I glued it on colored construction paper because my teams are colors versus numbers. Here are a few different styles of team mats:
To start forming your teams, choose an assessment to level your students. I use a reading comprehension assessment from state or district. There are four levels high, high medium, low medium, and low. Order yours students scores. Divide the number of students you have by 4. For example, I have 25 students so I divide 25 by 4 which is 6 remainder one. That means I will have 6 teams. Five teams of 4 students and one of them will be a group of 5. Count 6 from the top of the list, those are the high students. Do the same from the bottom, those are the low students. Then work your way in. The top portion will be the high mediums and the bottom portion will be the low mediums. The extra student will be right in the middle academically (if you count top to bottom, bottom to top). This will make it easy to place him or her in any group. Place the extra students (5) on the side of a team like shown below.
Next, put students into teams one student from each level. Try to have 2 boys and 2 girls in every group if possible and mixed racial. I like to make all my high (high medium, low medium, and low) kids the same number in each group. This way I can choose the same level in each group to start a task (Example: Number ones will begin by reading the story to their team.) It the task is difficult I may ask the high students to start so the rest of the team know what to do. It the task is easy I may want by low students to start to boost their self-esteem. Students often work with shoulder or face partners, so make sure you place the high and low student diagonal from each other to avoid frustration for either student. Organize the students like the picture below.
Here are other ways to organize your teams.