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This article presents the author's views on the need of grouping in the classrooms. Purposes of teaching and learning efficiency, and the need for collective action must be served. Teachers must group to teach single particulars, using such as bases for classroom organization. Such grouping on a single particular can come only after an initial, exploratory teaching act which, individually, enables the teacher to identify specific items or elements common to two or more children. These single items, these isolated particulars, then, become the lesson plan for those particular children, and no others. Grouping, the author believes, must be a function and process of content, curriculum, and of its learning. By this the author means that if the content is narrow, the grouping range is narrow; if content is wide and varied, then grouping range can be wide and varied. However, there is no study that includes measurement of this kind of grouping. Teachers need such studies. One must turn to non-classroom centered practices, which are not researched but are highly relevant to this point.

This article focuses on the use of classroom grouping for effective learning. The question of grouping covers a multitude of practices and points of view. Throughout educational practice, students are being grouped and regrouped, classified and reclassified, categorized and recategorized. Youngsters group naturally and educators should use this propensity to group living, no matter how ephemeral and vacillating it may seem at times. When they use this approach, they are capitalizing on their resources in an effort to improve the learning situation. There is the buzz group--of short duration and immediate purpose. With these quickly formed groups of five or six, teachers can provide opportunities for rapid sharing of homework assignments, for exchange of ideas and for formulation of problems and questions. Then there are the job groups. Some students can constitute a materials committee, whose function is to locate and arrange different instructional materials pertinent to a particular unit of study. A third type of grouping is represented by work-study committees, organized to facilitate deeper and broader exploration of various aspects of a problem or unit. These all groups can play an important part in facilitating learning and should be utilized at appropriate times and for appropriate purposes.