Why I Built A Student Grouping App (And Need Parent And Teacher Testers To Try It)
Last Tuesday, I stayed after school to prep for our 4th grade ecosystem project, and forty-five minutes in, I was still staring at my whiteboard covered in crumpled sticky notes. My coffee was cold, a half-eaten peanut granola bar sat crumbing next to my stack of ungraded reading quizzes, and I’d just moved Liam’s name for the fourth time. Split him from Tyler, obviously—they’ve been throwing erasers at each other nonstop since their fight over a basketball last month. But I also needed to make sure every group had at least one kid who was solid on measuring, because half the project requires calculating the size of their dioramas. By the time I got the groups sorted, I had ten minutes to pack up my bag and beat the rain home.
I’ve been teaching fourth grade for eight years, and this scene plays out at least once a month. For years, I cycled through the same standard methods that all have big flaws. Letting kids pick their own groups always leaves one kid sitting alone, checking their shoes, while everyone else pairs off with their best friend. Random name draws work sometimes, but I’ve ended up with three of my most easily distracted kids in one group more times than I can count, and that’s a recipe for zero work getting done. The built-in grouping tools in the district’s learning management system? They only let you sort by test scores and grade level. They don’t know that Mia works best with only one kid she knows well, that Leo lights up when he gets to work with other dinosaur fans, that my new student Zane won’t talk to anyone if you stick him with three of the most outgoing kids in the class.
I mentioned this frustration to my brother-in-law over Thanksgiving dinner last year, between slices of pie and the kids running around with their handprint turkeys. He codes small apps in his free time, and he said it sounded like a problem someone should build a simple tool for. We started meeting for an hour every Sunday after church, throwing around ideas, and six months later, we have a working version. It lets you add any kid to a list, tag them with whatever custom notes matter to you—“avoid [name]”, “needs a quiet partner”, “space fan”, “strong writer”, “needs extra support reading”—then tell it how many groups you want, and it generates options that respect all your tags in 90 seconds. If you don’t like the first result, you hit shuffle and get a new one. No more sticky notes falling off the board, no more 45 minutes of rearranging after class.
What a lot of people outside of classrooms don’t get about grouping kids is that it’s not just busywork for teachers. It’s one of the most important things we do every project. I saw this firsthand with Zane, who joined our class mid-year back in February. He was so quiet he wouldn’t even answer when I called his name for attendance. My first try at grouping put him with a group of three friendly, outgoing kids, which I thought would help him open up. He just sat there the whole period, drawing in his notebook and not saying a word. Then I remembered I’d seen him showing a rare Pokemon card to the recess aide, so I added “Pokemon fan” as a tag for him and two other kids who talked about Pokemon every day at recess, and rearranged the groups. Within a week, that group was working harder than any other on their project, and Zane even got up to present their work to the class. If I’d only sorted by reading level, I never would have gotten that outcome.
Even if you never touch our app, this approach to grouping is something you can try this week. Next time you’re splitting kids into groups, instead of defaulting to random draws or friend picks, write down one or two non-ability factors that matter. If you’re a parent organizing a playdate activity, note which kids share a common hobby and intentionally put a new kid with that group. If you’re a teacher, update your list of who can’t work with who at the start of every month, because friendships and conflicts shift faster than you think. It takes two extra minutes, and it makes a huge difference in how included kids feel, and how much work they get done.
The app works fine for my classroom, but it’s only been tested by me. I know other teachers have different needs—middle school teachers grouping for literature circles, special ed teachers grouping for small group instruction, homeschool co-op leaders grouping kids across different ages. Parents need it too: I’ve had parent friends tell me they struggle with splitting kids into teams for birthday party games, or rec league sports, or scout outings, for all the same reasons I do. You don’t want all the most competitive kids on one team, you don’t want to leave the quiet kid off everyone’s radar, you need to split up two kids who’ve been feuding. That’s why we’re looking for external testers right now, to work out the kinks we can’t see from just one classroom.
For testers, it’s totally free, and you get free access forever once we launch, no strings attached. All we ask is that you spend 10 minutes after you use it two or three times filling out a quick feedback form telling us what worked, what didn’t, and what feature you wish you had that we don’t offer. We don’t store any of your data long-term if you don’t want us to, and we never share any information about kids or groups with third parties.
Right now, we’re still tweaking the algorithm. Last week I ran a group generate and it forgot to split Liam and Tyler up, so we’re adjusting the priority of conflict tags to make sure that never happens. I don’t know if this app will end up being useful for every teacher or parent, but I know it solves a real problem that I’ve dealt with every month for almost a decade. It’s just a simple tool, built by a teacher who got tired of wasting after-school time rearranging sticky notes. If you’re interested in trying it out, send a note through the contact form here—we’re taking the first 100 testers over the next two weeks, and we’d love to have your input. We’re still figuring this out as we go, and that’s the whole point.
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