Tips for Creating Data-Informed Student Groups

Why should you create data-informed student groups?

If your Student-Tutor Ratio is Small Groups instead of one-on-one, the composition of these groups will influence session effectiveness. If students are grouped haphazardly, without regard for their academic strengths and struggles, then tutors will find it much more challenging to meet the individual needs of every student in a group. On the other hand, grouping students based on their academic performance data will help tutors plan efficiently and facilitate effectively: when students facing similar challenges are grouped together, their tutor can address their needs all at once. After considering mastery data, adjust groups based on students’ personalities and learner profiles as secondary considerations.

Checklist for Creating Data-Informed Student Groups

Depending on the length of the tutoring program, students may need to be re-grouped periodically. Students' relative skill levels change over time, so grouping students based on skill involves regularly reassessing students' skill levels and re-grouping them accordingly.

Primary Consideration: Academic Mastery Data. First, consider students’ prior mastery of the session’s content.

  • Program Diagnostic Data.
    • If applicable, how did students perform on similar questions from the first baseline assessment at the start of the tutoring program? Which students struggled with which content elements?
  • School Baseline Data.
    • If applicable, how did students perform on similar questions from a recent in-school summative assessment? Which students struggled with which content elements?
  • Program Session Assessments.
    • How have students performed on end-of-session assessment tasks related to this session’s content?
  • Other Relevant Data.
    • What prerequisite skill and knowledge gaps might prevent students from accessing this session’s content?
      • What are students’ Lexile levels?
      • What are students’ first languages?
        • If a student’s first language is not English, can you place that student with a tutor who speaks their first language?
    • What short-term goals have students set recently that might relate to this session’s content?

Secondary Considerations. What other information, qualitative or quantitative, might you consider for each group?

  • Students’ Personalities.
    • How extraverted or introverted is each student? 
  • Students’ Maturity Levels.
    • How old is each student in this group? How developmentally mature are they?
    • Would some groups act less maturely than their constituent students alone? What about more maturely?
  • Students’ Learner Profiles.
    • What other learning needs and habits does each student in this group have?
    • How quickly does each student in this group tend to absorb new material?
    • How much practice time does each student in this group tend to need?