Grouping Students not so Scary!

I guess what I want to share with my fellow teacher "classmates" is that I have really worked hard on the group assignments issue I had.  I had terrible experiences with it last year and nearly "swore them off!".  I have had to constantly remind myself that I inherited these classes half-way through the last school year with all of its problems and my bad experiences grouping students together for learning projects.   I have learned a lot from our lessons on grouping students and have listened and learned from everyone's stories and experiences as well.  Many of them I have put to practice over the last couple of weeks on smaller projects and my students have pleasantly surprised me.  I now realize that the core of my problem last year was letting the students choose their own groups and boy, what a mistake that was! (And how naive of me!) The nuturing side of me has taken a step down and the more commanding side of me as a more knowledgable teacher of teens has stepped up.  I now have more hetergeneous groups and it is working so much better. The other lesson I have put into practice is teaching these students the rules for working in groups and the expectations they should have from each other as well as meeting my expectations. Teaching social skills is not easy but they really do not come with many!  This will be an ongoing process but I am up to the challenge.  I have a cultural diversity project planned for them in the very near future. Let's hope these students continue to surprise me - in good way! :)
Oh, I have one last thought.  I love the idea of the pencil activity for group work!  I heard many of you did too.  Think I better go run out and invest in pencil stock asap!    ;)