Back to School Basics : Creating Heterogenous Groups with a Classroom Rug Seating Chart

Map of my Classroom's actual carpet

Once school gets rolling, I group my students in color groups. Before my district purchased this carpet for my classroom, I had 6 children in 4 color groups (red, orange, yellow, green) and the carpet had more than enough of each colored square for each child. However, THIS new carpet only has 5 squares of each color ... so it made things difficult for groups of 6. My solution was to ignore the carpet colors and create my own student groups in horizontal rows.

How I form my groups using the seating chart. 

The first row is one team. The second row is the next and so on and so forth. I still call them color teams because old habits die hard! When it comes to using color groups I'm a lifer! For example, in the images above the children in the first oval are in the Red Team. The second oval makes up the orange team, third oval is yellow team, and last oval is the green team. Once I solved this hurdle with the new carpet everything fell into place and I was able to move forward with teaching kids their assigned groups which bring me to ... color necklaces.

During guided reading they wear colored necklaces. Shown above. I cut a construction paper to fit inside these plastic name tag necklaces in four colors: red, orange, yellow, green along with a white strip of card stock (or an index card) with their name written clearly in black. This helps them to remember their teams. Once Kindergarten has been in session for about 3 weeks they can remember their color group and no longer need to wear the necklaces during guided reading (unless we have a substitute). I've used the same Lakeshore Clear Necklaces since my first year of teaching 8 years ago. They're pricey but very durable.