Making small groups

Small groups sit on a Mastery Board, beside the recording they are made from. Open the class, open the board, and choose the Small groups tab. The units run across the top of the board, above the tabs, and each unit keeps its own groups. Choosing a unit there shows its groups; a unit without any says so.

1. Choose the unit along the top.
2. Under Group by, choose what to sort on: The whole unit, The whole board, or one of the unit's objectives or standards.
3. Under Split the class by, choose Number of Groups or Max Students per Group, and a number from 2 to 10.
4. Choose Assign Small Groups.

Changing a choice does not change the groups by itself. Assign Small Groups turns purple and becomes Update Small Groups until you press it, and beside it the page says Choices not applied yet. Press Update Small Groups button to apply changes. Put the choice back and it goes back to Assign Small Groups.

Children with similar scores go together, and the groups come out as even as the class allows. Where they cannot be even, the larger groups are the higher-scoring ones, so the children who need the closest attention are in the smallest.

A child with no score on what you grouped by is left under Not in a group rather than guessed at. Place them with the dots beside their name.

A unit nobody has been scored on yet says so. Assign Small Groups still works there: it places the class at random, as evenly as it can, and shows no scores beside the names. Assign again for a new mix, or group by The whole board to sort by how they have done so far.

Then change them

The first set is a draft; you know who cannot sit together. The dots beside a child move them to another group or take them out of groups. Manually Add a Group puts an empty one at the end, on a unit with groups or one without. A group's own dots hold Rename — Red, Monday table — and Delete group, which leaves its children in no group rather than taking them off the board. Assign Small Groups or Update Small Groups on a unit that already has groups asks first, because it puts everyone back where the scores put them. Other units' groups are never touched.

Printing them

1. Choose the unit along the top, then Print.
2. Under Pages, choose All groups on one page or Each group on its own page.
3. Choose Portrait or Landscape, and Color or Black and white.
4. Choose Print again. The sheet opens in a new tab, with your browser's print window up, and the unit's name at the top.

Each Mastery Board keeps its own groups, so a class can be grouped one way on its reading board and another way on its math board.