Thoughts on Grouping Students

I just read a blog post by Jane Goodwin titled “Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus.” Never mind the Latin title which I believe roughly translates to “Never tickle a sleeping dragon.” Her post is on the educational advantages of running a school like Hogwarts, the school in Harry Potter. While I agree with much of what Ms. Goodwin has to say, I must admit that I loved the series and may be a little biased. It focuses on maintaining real-world application and not basic skills instruction as the foundation of middle and high school instruction. Students are trusted enough to be given unsupervised free time and plentiful group work. While that may sound like an ideal in a work of fiction, I would trust most of the students that I have had in those situations. They are still kids and need guidance, but they are good kids and rise to the occasion when given the opportunity. You can read Ms. Goodwin’s post in its entirety here.

One of Ms. Goodwin’s comments got me thinking. In Hogwarts, at the beginning of the year, there is a ceremony where students are divided into houses by a Sorting Hat. Here is what Ms. Goodwin said about the practice:

“Peer pressure was rather encouraged, although not the bad kind.  The suggestion that a student who did poorly gave the entire House a bad name was enough to make the slackers buck up.”

I tend to agree with her. In my instruction, I do a lot of group work. This year, as a librarian, I often will leave it up to the classroom teacher if we choose the groups or allow the students to do so. I see advantages to both. Next year, as I have mentioned a few times on this blog, I hope to be teaching computer programming, MS Office, and Web 2.0 Tools classes at a school in Massachusetts. All of these classes lend themselves to independent group work, preferably on solving problems with real-world application.

My thought is that it could be beneficial to students to break them into houses for the first grading period. I acknowledge the risk in grouping students prior to learning about their individual strengths and weaknesses. However, I think it could help them in a number of ways.

1. In my experience, if given the opportunity to work with people they are friends with and people they are not friends with, students will always choose their friends, regardless of what is the best choice for them academically. This is human nature. It is good for the students and the school culture for them to break out of their comfort zone and make new connections.
2. I have seen research the articulates how students with many connections are more likely to stay in school and to do well. My hope is that the houses would act as a family. When 1 member is struggling, the family will help. If one person’s is bullied at lunch, others will stand up for him/her. Family is there for each other no matter what; I want to replicate that in my classroom. Therefore, it is very necessary that I get my students thinking of each other as family.
3. Some competition is good. I don’t mean that everything should be a fierce competition or that school should only be about something produced rather than something learned. I do think, however, that being a part of a team, and caring about that team, can get the students to take pride in their work. Publishing and publicly applying will be a big part of all of my classes. Ideally, the group members, once they begin to care about their house-mates, will not want to let them down and try harder than they might otherwise.

What do you think? Are there some dangers that I’m missing or benefits that I haven’t thought of? This is not definitely part of my syllabus yet (I haven’t even officially been hired yet.), but I like the idea. As a Harry Potter fan, I would probably buy or find a big, old hat to have the kids sit under and right a program to randomize which house the students are placed in. Please let me know what you think in the comments.