I’ve been imagining happy biology students. Indulging in summertime rest – feet up, ice water in hand – I love looking forward with optimism. When I imagine effervescent 14-year-old biologists, they're talking. In Designing Groupwork, Cohen and Lotan note research showing that learning is significantly related to talking on-task. I’d love to get my students talking next year, but figuring out how to group them has always been a stumbling block for me – it’s a job that’s time-consuming and riddled with potential potholes.

Then I read Sarah Brown Wessling’s blog post on making magnets for student grouping. She sprayed black board paint on business card magnets, and then wrote a student name on each magnet. Sarah keeps the magnets on her white board; this allows her to moves student seamlessly from group to group.

I wanted to try Sarah’s idea, but …

Megan + paint = disaster.

So I found adhesive chalk labels and stuck them on business card labels – a perfect fit!


Come September, we’ll see if I can make it work.

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