Sorting Students into Small Groups

One of the ways to incorporate group work is to sort students into groups at the start of class. On the page where I shared the anonymous leaderboard, we see that in that specific semester we were using a "Hunger Games" theme (and read the first book). I first started with "Harry Potter" Hogwarts Houses...

I cannot tell you how many times I've been asked, "What is your Hogwarts house?" Well, it's Ravenclaw but that is beside the point right now! This question is just one of those pop culture statements that will probably never die. However, sorting people of the same mindset or manner can prove to be quite a DISASTER. If you've done a Harry Potter-style group sort, you already know.

Instead, I use the Gary Smalley personality type inventory (often known as "Lion, Beaver, Otter, Golden Retriever). There are tons of websites that offer this test for free; I prefer that my in-person students fill out this inventory while I have also used PersonalityAnimal.Com for online classes.

Once students submit their personality inventory/send me the results, I begin analyzing the availability of each type. I then attempt to group ONE of EACH type into a group. Sometimes it doesn't work out how I want. This is why the written inventory is better because you can use a student's second highest score to sort them if needed.

Here is my result from the latter:

An image of a golden retriever with personality attributes