Card clusters

This strategy will help students to:

• reflect individually and share ideas with others
• generate ideas to classify, group, label and generalise upon.

Implementation

1. Place students in groups.
2. Give each student two or three slips of paper.
3. Pose a problem or question related to a health or safety issue. For example: What strategies do you use to help protect yourself from blood-borne viruses?
4. Students individually write responses on the slips of paper. Only one idea should be written on each slip of paper.
5. Students place their responses in the middle of the group then through discussion with other group members cluster them by identifying similarities. A heading or title may be given to each pile of slips.
6. All groups come together to share their card clusters. Responses may be represented graphically in a mind map or bar graph, or in written form by using each idea as a new sentence.