If the learning experience is configured for small groups, it will contain a Small Groups badge on the experience card.

This means that at some point in the experience, students will work in small groups (usually of 3-5 students) to complete a portion of the learning experience. 

When a learning experience contains Small Groups, you define the groups of students that will work together when assigning the experience. You do this as follows:

1. Use the left-hand menu to navigate to the specific class you want to assign. NOTE: You cannot configure Small Groups from the All Classes assign option. This assign option is for bulk assigning and does not provide an interface for setting small groups or reading groups per class.

2. Click the blue plus button to assign.

3. In Small Group experiences, a grid will appear in Step 2 of the Assign Process. You can adjust the number of small groups (minimum 2, maximum 10). Assign each student to a small group by clicking a group square beside his or her name. You will not be able to assign the experience until you have placed every student into a small group and ensure that every group has at least one member.

Once Small Groups are configured for a particular class, they will be remembered for the next assignment. Once configured for a particular class, you can assign that class from the All Classes menu option as well. However, if you want to edit the students in a given group, you need to assign through the specific class.

You can see which student is in which group in your dashboard by the colored icon to the left of each student's name. You can sort the student list by Small Group, Name, or Progress.

When teaching the learning experience, the teacher notes will instruct you when to organize the class into small groups and when to have students return to individual work or class-wide work.

During small group work, we recommend that you assign a note-taker for each small group or tell the students to choose their own. Each small group makes one post for all members. Posts will be from the small group, and every member of the small group gets credit for the post made.

When using Small Groups during remote learning, the first student to a small group entry can post on behalf of the group. All other group members will see this post when they arrive and can modify it if they like using the edit feature. All students in a given group get credit for the small group post.

NOTE: If you are working synchronously remotely, it is a good idea to tell students in advance who the note-taker will be for their specific group. Otherwise, all students will try to answer the small group post at once and may write over one another in the process.

While small group work is a good instructional practice, at times it may not fit your situation. You can assign any small group lesson as self-paced or whole class instruction. To be assigned the first time, you will need to configure the Small Groups as described above, but once students are in a group, you do not need to configure again for a given class. If you let students know they should proceed without working in small groups, then they can proceed. The only difference in the flow of the learning experience is that, for the Small Group prompts, the first student in a given Small Group will need to respond, and all other students in the group can edit that response or leave it to proceed in the lesson. Usually in a Small Group lesson, there are 2-3 Small Group prompts and the rest of the questions are either individual work or whole assignment sharing, like other learning experiences.