A colourful class

We used this technique as a way of forming groups during the 09/09 class. The way we did it was by picking the colour of sheet that we wanted to make our name posters. Later on we formed groups according to the chosen colours. It is an interesting technique, specially for very young children, however, I think it might present a few problems and disadvantages: First and foremost, the groups are likely to lack balance (e.g. too many children choose red and nearly any of them brown); secondly, in case we give an equal number of sheets (or tokens, or balloons, or whatever) there might be problems because two or more of them want to pick the same one; finally, children learn very fast how does it work, so in subsequent occasions they might choose the colour thinking of who they want to team up with and discourages the socialization of the group as a whole. On the other hand, it is still and interesting technique as long as we use it with young children and we embed it within a different activity (for instance taking a token from the magic bag when the main character of the story is receiving something), using it to create atmosphere. Picking the colour blindly might be a good idea, specially once they know it might be use to create the groups.