Random-Grouping Learning

What is Random Grouping and What is its Rationale?

Random grouping is one teaching practice that came from Dr. Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms.  It is about assigning students to random groups every class and giving them an opportunity to work on math problem-solving skills in groups.  The rationale is to allow students to develop good social and problem-solving skills so that they will be ready to work in groups when they are in university, college, or the workplace.

How Does Random Grouping Work?

Mr. Ho uses Flippity to visibly generate random groups of students for each class.  Here are some examples of the visibly randomized groups:

Pictures of Each Random Group

How Did Students Feel About this Random Grouping Learning Approach?

Mr. Ho gave each student a self-reflection survey to complete at the end of the random-grouping learning.  Here are the results or responses from his students from his three sections of his grade 12 math class (i.e., two MDM4U1s and one MCV4U1).  Note: In a scale from 1 to 10 in the survey questions below, 1 means "never" and 10 means "always."