Organizing for Effective Early Childhood Programs and Practices

David Burchfield

David Burchfield, a first grade teacher at Brownsville Elementary School in Crozet, Virginia, discusses the grouping strategy he uses to promote a learning environment in his classroom. Excerpted from a videotaped interview with David Burchfield (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1992).

"The grouping arrangements are decided based on a cooperative structure. In a lot of cooperative learning tasks, groups are fairly rigidly structured. With younger children, it's more useful to mix children heterogeneously, so the top group and the middle group, if you want to call them that, will be structured in such a way so that children will be able to talk to one another, communicate, cooperate and plan the activities they're doing."

This Critical Issue was researched and written by Judy Harris Helm, president of Best Practices Inc., an educational consulting firm in Brimfield, Illinois, and former coordinator of professional development at Valeska Hinton Early Childhood Education Center in Peoria, Illinois.

Date posted: 1997
Revised: 1999