Is there any significance to ability group names!

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This is a bit of a lighthearted thread - I'm not worrying about it (too much!). But I just wondered if when teachers give names to reading groups/numeracy groups there is any significance behind it.

Are the "elephants" a bit slow and lumbering and the "monkeys" the cheeky chatty kids?

Do the "orchids" need lots of attention and care and will the "dandilions" achieve no matter what the situation?

Or do the teachers just do it randomly to mess with our heads??

DD's class has groups for literacy and numeracy, although they are quite fluid and children do move around the groups depending on the work being covered. As DD's class is a mixed year group (Yr 1, 2 and 3) it is fairly easy for the children to work out where they are in terms of ability. However, the names of the groups really give nothing away!

Our school has mixed ability tables and the table names are based on that term's topic and chosen by the children.

Nobody has any idea where their child is in the class although obviously my DC are both top of the class in every subject in my mind

I usually let the kids pick names for their workgroups, themed according whatever is going on at the time. It worked pretty well until I told students to call themselves after dog breeds and one little cheeky girl decided she wanted to call her group 'the bitches'. Needless to say I vetoed it, but let's just say that it wasn't that far off the mark for that particular little group! I also vetoed anything ending in 'oodle' except for "The Poodles". No cross-bred groups in my classroom.

My DS has SEN. I was a bit shocked that someone had written SN on the front of his reading diary in massive letters. I later figured out he was in Mr Sneeze group for literacy

DD has spring flowers at the moment (daffodil, crocus, snow drop, tulip and primrose) not sure what the pattern is though, they change each half term depending on the subject.

At both DSs school they have shapes for maths, hexagon the highest and circle the lowest. They also had literacy groups which were colours in alphabetical orders.

I asked the DCs how they knew that Hexagons was the top group - they replied because it had the clever children in.

In DS2S class now they don't have a system like this anymore but the children still know which is the top, middle and bottom group, even in Y1, as they know who is doing harder work etc.

They were always very fluid groups BTW which was good which is how I found out about the names as DS1s friend said she had moved up to the 2nd group (hexagons from pentagons) and I asked her how she knew it was the 2nd group and not the top one.

My DC have all been in classes where they choose the group name. For example, DD is in a set which (in English- although due to where we live, the original name isn't) is called the Vampires. They have a theme each term, so this one it's ghost and scary stories, so there's a Zombie table, a Haunted House table and so on.

Never mind what they're called, is the low ability table by the door?! I've seen this so many times!

at ours the" low ability table" was always by the door as the kids were taken out frequently for additional one to one sessions and small group sessions in a different room with the TA...

At our school they are animals (at least in Y2).

Elephants (the lowest group)
Giraffes
Lions
Tigers
Zebras.

Looks like it might be alphabetical order. DD is a Lion. last year it was fruit.

I really hope not, because DS 2 was a Jellyfish. About the least evolved species in existence (and they didn't have a 'plankton' group)...

When I still had maths groups (headteacher was very keen on them!) then I had elephants, monkeys, hippos and tigers. Easiest work, middle, harder, top.

I visited one school where they were units, tens, hundreds and thousands!

Now I have a headteacher that likes the way I differentiate and match the work to the children and I ditched my groups and the names.

I do have reading groups for guided reading.

Publishers, illustrators, poets and authors. THere's a logic there that help me remember. There's no point worrying whether the children are clued into it as they are year 4 and are fully aware of who is where in the class and were when they came up to me.

The low ability group in DD's class is closest to the teachers desk, the top group is by the door, it's a small reception class though so all the groups go off to do different things during the day and they don't spend a massive amount of time sat at their tables anyway.

I did work with a teacher once who had a fruit theme and called the bottom group "lemons". I don't really have groups - apart from phonics, but they change so much that there is no point them having names.

We had planets. The brightest kids were closest to the sun.

In First School DSs had-

Names of Chocolate Bars
Harry Potter characters

A colleague of mine had hers named after animals. Moles, foxes,squirrels eagles(the ones underground were obviously the less able ) On another term where the topic was colours she gave the brightest colours to the able and the dull colours to the less so. I used to feel very sorry for her poor pupils in the grey group...

My children's school use tree-names, or colours. The kids have figured out the pecking order anyway.

"the one sided shape is for the kids who struggle"

I didn't even know there was a one-sided shape until about a year ago!

DS (y1) also has shapes, with hexagon highest.

The reading ability groups are given a colour and this is done in order of reading levels, with pink/red the lowest ability group (someone told me that otherwise I would never had spotted the pattern).

The literacy groups are all toys and I don't think there is any clue in the highest vs lowest ability groups.

My sister swears she did a teaching placement at a school with a plankton table (hoping the others were crill etc?!).

It does bug me that the top reading group in DDs class has the most, for want of a better word, glamorous, name and on top of that, it is gender specific (for girls) so doubly attractive to DD, who will never sit there. The names are all titles of children's books.

I once caused a lot of trouble calling a reading group Slytherin. 'Parents in to see me' type trouble. Personally I think Slytherin is a much cooler house. Gryffindor is far too goody goody AND Harry was sorted into Slytherin originally. It was a top group of 7 year old girls and they were NOT impressed!

One of my colleagues once called her groups after sea creatures. One day she called across her classroom to her LSA to let her know which group she was working with for that session......"Mrs X you've got the crabs"