E10 - How to: Mix groups

Modified on Thu, 14 Aug at 12:55 AM

TABLE OF CONTENTS

E10 - How to: Mix students from different groups (number and letter groups)
Class data > Action bar tab > Mix groups
Syntax
Suggested reading

Preamble

In many schools, the students are divided into groups which will stay together for the core subjects such as Maths, English and Science with a maximum of 30 students per group. However, the students may need to be divided into smaller groups for the practical classes such as Visual Arts, Music and Technology with a maximum of 20 students per group.

The core classes will typically be set up using letter groups e.g. 7A, 7B, etc. The smaller practical classes will be set up using number groups e.g. 7-1, 7-2, etc. In the screenshot example below, there are 4 letter groups and 6 number groups.

Normally letter groups and number groups do not mix. In any period, either there is a set of letter group or a set of number group classes running.

This means it could be that 7A has ENG, 7B has MAT, 7C has SCI and 7D has PDH; so long as all 4 letter groups each have a class running in the same period.
Similarly, it could be that 7-1 has TEC, 7-2 has TEC, 7-3 has Art, 7-4 has MUS, 7-5 has TEC and 7-6 has TEC; as long as all 6 number groups each have a class running in the same period. In this example, for this particular period, the school would need to have 4 TEC teachers available to take classes in the one period. For many schools this is not feasible, as resources such as specialist teachers and rooms are restricted.

Tes provides a way of mixing the letter and number groups to enable more flexibility.

Class data > Action bar tab > Mix groups

Mix groups is used to describe how the alphabetic groups (e.g. '7A') can be mixed with the numerical groups (e.g. '7-3'). By default, the alphabetic groups are simply not allowed to mix with the numerical groups, meaning they must always be on at separate periods. However, a year-level may be split into 2 or 3 "split-year groups", where each split-year group combines 1 or more alphabetic groups and 1 or more numerical groups and forms a sub-timetable by itself.

Syntax

A string such as: "AB=123, CD=456" means there are 2 half-year-groups: the first one consisting of 7A and 7B, and the second one consisting of 7C and 7D. Each grouping is separated by a comma.

The 7A/7B group is then subdivided into 7-1, 7-2 and 7-3. The 7C/7D group is subdivided into 7-4, 7-5 and 7-6.

Below is a sample of combinations of classes generated using the Mix group rule "AB=123, CD=456". Each column represents a set of Yr7 classes that could run at the same time in one period, where the class identifier A/B/C/D represents a class associated with a letter group and the class identifier 1/2/3/4/5/6 represents a class associated with a number group.

To ensure the entries that have been made are correct go to Tab > Year Structure (Ctrl-L). Within this screen, a 'quilt' of the classes for that year is visible. There should be no instances of '!' as this means something is wrong and the class data screen needs to be checked.

E10 - How to: Mix groups

Preamble

Class data > Action bar tab > Mix groups

Syntax

Suggested reading