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Group size
Benefits and limitations of different-sized groups
Look at the grid below. It shows a range of different-sized groupings with their benefits and limitations. The right-hand column indicates when groups of this size may support your teaching.
Think about one of the classes you teach. Annotate the grid to indicate which benefits and limitations apply for this class.
Ask another teacher who also teaches this class how they approach group working with them. Discuss with your colleague in which lessons or circumstances you would each use the different group sizes.
Select two issues from the limitations column. How would you and your colleague address them if you wanted to use the corresponding group size in a lesson?
| Grouping
|
Benefits
|
Limitations
|
When to use
|
| Individual
|
Has to think for self
|
Isolated within own experience and knowledge
|
When you want to be sure it is all their own work
|
| Pair
|
- Obliged to talk
- Secure
- Unthreatening
- No need to move desks
- Quick
|
- Prone to quick consensus
- Little challenge from different viewpoints
- Allocation of loners can be difficult
|
- When the topic is personal or sensitive
- When you need only a brief discussion
|
| Small group (three to four)
|
- Diversity of opinion without the size of group being too threatening
- Turning a pair round can create a table of four without moving desks
|
- Social pressures begin to set in: ‘We always work together’; ‘Do we have to work with girls?’; ‘I have no one to work with’
- Possible for individuals to stay quiet once there are more than two
|
- To build confidence
- To increase social interaction in the class
- As an interim stage before whole-class discussion
|
| Large group (five to seven)
|
- Diversity of ideas, experience, opinion
- Bridges the gap between small-group experience and contributing to whole- class discussion
|
- Have to move desks
- Requires chairing and social skills
- Can easily be dominated
- More pupils remain silent
|
- For discussion requiring a range of views and ideas
- For developing teamwork
|
| Whole class
|
- Everyone gets the same experience
- Teacher can monitor and support the talk
|
- Several pupils remain silent
- More difficult to contribute and there can be frustration in having to wait, discussion moving on, etc.
- Risk of domination by the bright, confident and talkative
- Risk of teacher doing most of the talking
|
When it is essential that all pupils hear the same messages
|
