The Grouping by Criteria Technique
Grouping by Criteria is an effective, simple and fast technique to form pairs or small teams in a random and non-traditional way.
Do you need to ask your group to ‘form pairs’ or ‘form small groups’ and you wanted to do it randomly?… Then here we offer you a solution!
Assemble your group and ask everyone in your group to find one other person who also identifies with a particular criteria you announce. For example, ask each person to find someone else who has the same or similar colour top, or length of hair, month of birth, number of letters in their first name, etc.
Here we offer you some possible criteria to use:
- Colour of top, pants, socks, etc
- Type of shoes worn
- Month/season of birth
- Length of hair
- Height, or size of hands, feet, thumb, ears, etc
- Colour of eyes or hair
- Favourite car, animal, ice-cream flavour, TV show, etc
- Same last digit of their street address
- Choice of the holiday destination selected from three possibilities, for example, Beach and Sea, Mountains and Lakes, Cities.
- Favourite genre of movie, sport, book, etc
- Number of letters, syllables or vowels in their name
If these do not convince you, you can devise your own criteria based on the number of people to group.
