Group Grid

This CoLT is probably most useful in introductory level courses where students are building basic schema, learning a large number of new terms, and trying to understand the categorisation rules of the discipline. Organising and classifying information helps students to clarify conceptual categories and to develop categorisation skills. By making students’ conceptual organisation explicit and graphic, Group Grid also helps students remember the information. In this activity, students sort pieces of information by placing them in the blank cells of a grid. The grid’s columns and rows consist of superordinate concepts, and students groups receive scrambled lists of subordinate terms, names, equations, images, or other items that belong in the categories. Teams sort the subordinate items into the correct grid categories.

1. Form groups and distribute the blank grid as a handout, or have students copy it from one that you project in an overhead transparency or draw on the chalkboard.

2. Give students the list of scrambled items of information.

3. Have students fill in the blank cells of the grid. Groups can discuss and come to consensus about how the items should be sorted, and fill out the grid as a group project. Or individual students can take turns in a Round Robin order, filling in one cell per turn. Each person within the group, or each pair within a quad, can have their own writing style (cursive versus printing) or coloured markers to distinguish their contributions.

4. Students submit completed grids for assessment and evaluation, or you post a correctly completed grid for them to check for accuracy.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTSIF6UIw7s

• http://serc.carleton.edu/introgeo/cooperative/techniques.html