Hi! In the midst of my spring break, I’m linking up with my blogging friends to share a classroom idea that you oughta know! You oughta know about this awesome grouping app, Team Shake, that will make creating collaborative groupings in your classroom a breeze!

My absolute favorite app on my school iPad is Team Shake! This app makes my classroom groupings extra efficient and so helpful. Team Shake is an fabulous iPad app that allows you to quickly, efficiently, and randomly select names or create teams in your classroom. For $0.99 this app has been an absolute life AND time saver!

It takes about 5-10 minutes to set it up with all the students’ names in your classroom. You also select their ability levels (high, medium, and low), and they can be paired up accordingly. You can select which kids CANNOT work together ahead of time, meaning that they will never be “randomly chosen” to be in the same group. However, the kids have no idea about this function! A few select kiddos are none the wiser that they are not going to be working together due to behavioral or personality conflicts.

The kids love when I plug the iPad into the projector so that they can watch the app “shake it up” and make teams. I used to hear complaints or see sad faces when teams were selected (as much as we talk about being respectful of all our classmates, unfortunately some kids have a…. difficult…. time keeping their feelings or disappointments to themselves). Now with Team Shake, the kids don’t seem to care as much who is in their groups, they are simply so excited to watch the groups randomly be made! They never ask why I never pair them up with a friend, because they know it is all up to our random name generator 🙂

This app is also great with specials teachers. For example, the guidance counselor has 30 minutes every other week to come into my classroom and give a lesson on a topic about friendship, bullying, or home life. She doesn’t know every student’s name in the class, and it is difficult in the short amount of time that she is in the room to quickly group the students for a fun activity. I love being able to swoop in, ask her how many teams she wants total, and then shake it up on my iPad so she can create her teams!

Don’t have an iPad or iPad projector adapter? If you have an iPhone, you can still use these and just tell the kids which group is which! It is still super simple and a big time saver.

How do you do your collaborative groupings? Do you have another app that you enjoy? Share with me in the comments below!

Now that you read my blog post, hop over to any of these other fabulous bloggers 🙂