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Small Groups

Some experiences are pre-designed for small group work, in which students collaborate, discuss, analyze, and answer questions together.

Itamar Tabenkin avatar
Written by Itamar Tabenkin
Updated this week

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. 

Defining Small Groups

Small-group experiences in Exploros allow educators to enhance collaboration and targeted learning by dividing students into smaller groups. 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. If a class is grayed out, it indicates that small groups have not been configured yet for that class.

  2. Click the blue plus button to assign.

  3. During Step 2 of the Assign Process, a small-group configuration grid will appear. You can use this grid to:

    • Adjust the number of groups (minimum 2, maximum 10).

    • Assign students to the groups by clicking a group square beside each name, ensuring that every student belongs to one group and each 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. If small groups have not been set up for a class, it will appear grayed out in the assignment interface. After the initial setup, the class becomes available for selection from the "All Classes" view for future assignments.

Teaching Small Groups

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.

Remote Learning and Small Groups

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.

Troubleshooting Common Issues

Why Are Classes Grayed Out When Assigning Small-Group Experiences?

If you notice that some classes are grayed out during the small-group assignment process, it’s an indication that small groups have not yet been configured for those classes. To address this:

  1. Open the specific class that is grayed out.

  2. Configure the small groups following the steps outlined above. Once small groups are properly set up for the class, it will no longer be grayed out. Additionally, the class will then be available for selection from the "All Classes" view for future assignments.

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.

Using Small Group Lessons without Small Groups

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.

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