Meaningful Meetings - Bringing Students Together With Purpose

One concern some people have about the customized classroom is that students may be too isolated and forced to fly solo all the time. This is a legitimate concern, but it is one that I've found best addressed by bringing students together for meaningful reasons. Here are some examples:

• Table Groups: My classroom features five rectangular tables (usually scattered throughout the classroom space). When students enter the room, they know to look at the board where they will find their initial instructions including the Table Groups for the class. While students are assigned to specific tables, they get to choose their seat at that table. Of course, if students doesn't like their assigned tables, they need not fret because we have several variations of Table Groups (Number Groups, Letter Groups, Tree Groups, Continent Groups, Sport Groups, etc.). The Table Groups for a particular class are based on my goals. Some groups sort the students to prevent distractions, some to join students by reading level, some to provide a mix of students, and even some student generated groups, allowing friends to sit together.

• Project Partnerships: As students work through their Learning Targets, they are periodically required to create a Learning Target Project. I recently reminded students that this is the perfect opportunity to work with a friend as students may temporarily recruit peer assistance on these projects. ("Temporarily" is the key word!) Even better, if both students are on our weekly Wall of Fame (for keeping up with the negotiated/assigned pace), they have the freedom of working in the hallway (a popular place, I'm told).

• Helping Hands: My students are blessed with iPad technology, and they use it very well. However, nobody knows how to do everything. When students are in need, they tend to be very welcoming to 'how to' tips from their peers, often from students whom they would not often choose as a partner for a project. The result is usually that the student in need gets the necessary help, but perhaps equally important is that the helper gets an opportunity to be useful and valued. In short, these are opportunities to bring kids together.

• Low Stress Jigsaws: Periodically, mixed groups of students are brought together in the classroom to share what they've been learning about a common topic. For example, while some of my students have recently been learning about point of view in literature, others have been learning about plot development or character development, or theme, etc. Yet, all of these students have been learning about literature. Putting these kids together at a table to just write down what they've been learning related to literature provides an opportunity for each and every student to have a "right" answer to jot on the paper. Every kid gets a marker, so it's all happening simultaneously. Then, students can move from table to table freely to see what other people wrote. The intended result is for students to gain a better understanding of how what they've been learning fits into a larger chunk of learning...and to create work alongside their peers in a low stress way.