Scenario Response 3

During the first semester this year, I grouped my journalism students into small groups of 4. Since each class had on average 24 students, this meant there were 6 groups to a class. Desks were arranged so that each group sat at a square of four desks. Grouping was homogenous  in terms of gender and ethnicity, largely because many of my Spanish speaking ELLS were more comfortable with this arrangement; but heterogenous in terms of language ability, which meant that in each group there were students with greater English-language facility who could help mentor those students who had less developed English-language facility. This kind of mentoring was particularly helpful when groups were presenting their project achievements (via PowerPoint) to the entire class. Mentors assigned roles when groups were presenting so that every student felt some measure of success. Over the course of the first semester, even students with lower facility with the English-language began to feel comfortable presenting their ideas. Also, as the semester progressed, the make-up of the groups were changed. Groups were now heterogenous as far as gender and ethnicity to broaden student exposure to diverse ideas and opinions.