When you come to the point to group your students you might face some difficulties, grumbling or frowning. You wonder how
to make them accept your decision without complaints. There are some tried and tested methods to help you with that.

You can choose random grouping if you only want to group children for a short time or only for a length of an activity

1. Uno Card Grouping

Easiest, no prepare grouping. Whoever picks the same colour or number will be in the same group.

2. Find the Picture (Puzzle Grouping)

Use pictures of animals to cut in pieces then get each child pick one and find the missing pieces. It is a fun way to mix and match them at the beginning of the year. If you have already decided how to group them, you can put their names on the back of the cards.
Not putting any names on the back could give you the opportunity to use this technique time to time. In this case as soon as you have finished with preparing the pieces of the puzzle, laminate and leave them somewhere close to reuse whenever you need to.

3. Family Background Grouping

Ask children to find their peers who has the same numbers of siblings as them. There could be one group who has a brothers, the
other consists children with sisters, in the third one gather kids with both (brothers and sisters) and in the fourth group there
are pupils without siblings. A variation of this grouping can be with older or younger brothers or sisters. It depends on the
families of your children in the class.

4. Birthday Grouping

Ask students about their date of birth and gather them according to the seasons they were born in. Giving names for the groups
would make it more fun. Our names are: Butterfly Chaser Spring Children, Sunny Summer Kids, Colourful Autumn Leaves Kids or Snowman
Builder Winter Children.

5. Internet Grouping

Using computers and technology in the classroom would make teachers' life much easier. There are great tools available on the
Internet to group students. You can use Super Teacher Tools to do the job instead of you.

6. Theme Grouping

Prepare cards with different categories. Eg.: Animals (lion, elephant, monkey, giraffe); Fruit (apple, pear, banana, orange); Colours (red, yellow, green, blue); Shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle) just to say the easiest ones. Tell the kids to look for their
peers who have the same category.

7. Sweet treat grouping

Save the fun for last. Group them with M&Ms. Everybody can pick one sweet, they would create groups with the same colours. Surely no-one will complain about this one.

Grouping children for a longer period of time or a whole term would be a bit trickier. But this a completely different
story.

Start your class with less stress putting these grouping techniques in your bag.
Which one works best for you? Share your tricks about grouping your children in the comments below.