Managing groups

Organising activities in small groups has a number of benefits for students with ASD including:

• limiting sensory distractions due to noise and movement
• managing the social demands of activities by reducing the amount of sharing and waiting time
• providing better opportunities to successfully practice interactive skills such as requesting a turn, waiting, sharing, listening to others, joining discussions, and turn taking via the smaller group and more predictable composition
• allowing for the different paces that students learn as well as the different levels they may be operating at within the curriculum
• allowing greater opportunities for peer tutoring
• allowing for multiple curriculum learning areas, general capabilities and cross-curricular priorities to be covered through group rotations
• flexible or varied group composition allows for students with ASD to work with others at similar, higher and lower levels to them, which provides opportunities for the teacher to highlight that everyone has different abilities, strengths, challenges and interests
• allowing opportunities for the teacher to rotate through a number of small groups on a regular basis
• lowering the adult to child ratio for some activities as required for targeted teaching
• allowing for efficient use of concrete and manipulative materials and learning centres.

Tips

• Tips for managing the groups​