Is there any significance to ability group names!

[housebox]

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??

There is a great deal of significance to the special, unspoken names which I have for ability groups of students. Those particular names will stay locked in my head, and help to keep me sane.

My youngest has fruits in her class. She's in the Strswberries. The lowest set are Kiwis. The ones sitting on the table at the start of year (although it's quite fluid) drew names out of the hat.

Interesting..my Dd is a monkey for literacy and a crab for maths, my nephew is in the same class and is lion for literacy and shark for maths...I'm guessing my nephew is doing well then

We have shapes for maths, DD1 (yr1) has moved into pentagons
and apparently that's an upward move according to teacher last night.

They have strawberries, oranges and bananas for spellings. And since the spelling sheet is on the website for all three groups it doesn't take much to work out what's what if strawberries are getting 'play' and bananas are getting 'cautiously'

Agree with other posters, any mystique is wasted on savvy 5 and 6 year-olds!

DD said the other day that she was glad that she's not a plum...

When my friend was doing a topic on homes, her strugglers were called the vacuums! Another friend caught herself saying, "Put your chairs up, Uranus."

Grioups 1, 2 and 3 [if needed]. However, since I shift them daily depending on what they're doing and what they did yesterday, it is more an indication of which bits of the classroom a group doing a particular task will be seated, rather than a label applied consistently to a specific group of children.

As in 'Those working in group 1 today will be working on the laptops', those with their names on the board will sit in the Group 2 area and work independently on the tasks they find there, while those children whose last piece of work is marked with 'group 3 tomorrow' will be with me.

Group 3 ciould be high ability children one day, low ability another day, it varies. But because I always give the instruction to them last (so I can set the other groups uop clearly), Group 3 are always the group working with me...

When I was at school I was in the Poor swimmers group. There was Poor, Middle and Good!

When I was in primary school the tables were in colour order, green, blue, red and yellow. Most people stayed on the same table all year but I had undiagnosed dyspraxia so I was moved between groups on an almost daily basis. Everyone knew which groups were which because the children in the yellow group were told to ask someone on the green table for help before asking the teacher.

At secondary school the teachers told all the classes that they were the top set which led to a lot of arguments in the playground!

Colour groups for me. Same colours for writing, reading as well as Numeracy. YR, Y1 and Y2 adopt the same colours in the same ranking - it makes it easier on teachers when we receive our next class in Sept. Nobody told us to do this - it happened gradually when YR teachers moved to Y1, taking with them a lot of their routines and when i went to Y2, I adopted the same groups with my new class as it was easier to interpet rather than make up new ones.
My afternoon/topic groups are mixed ability and are named after sea creatures - but crabs doesn't feature in my group names! But the kids DO now the significance of the groups as they've had them so long and they know who is clever and who is not. But it doesn't bother them.

*know not now!