Small Groups: The Heart of Your Reading Instruction

If you've been teaching for some time, you've probably noticed a recent shift in the debate between whole group versus small group instruction. Up until a couple years ago, emphasis was placed on the importance of small groups in reading instruction. Lately, there's been a shift. Many teachers we've talked to are now feeling pressure to teach primarily in a whole group setting. Whether they're required to teach from a manual, or their class sizes are increasing, there is less and less time for small groups.

While we recognize the value of whole group instruction (we'll discuss this in a second), we want to remind you of the importance of working with your students in small groups. In this blog post, we'll be sharing 8 reasons that small groups should be the heart of your reading instruction.

Now, we're not saying that there isn't a time and place for whole group reading instruction. Whole group instruction is the perfect time to teach your grade level content and standards. However, we also want to share the MANY benefits of small groups for your students. 

So let's dive in!

In small groups, you can focus on the specific reading skills that will move the needle for your students. Whether it's decoding, fluency, comprehension, or vocabulary, small groups give you a chance to differentiate your instruction.

With increasing class sizes, it's becoming more and more difficult to differentiate in the classroom. Common sense tells us that teaching to a sea of 30 students isn't going to meet the diverse needs of everyone in the classroom. Small groups are where we're able to do this.

With fewer students, each child has more opportunities to participate, ask questions, and share their thoughts. (Plus it's harder to hide when they don't understand a concept, which means you can intervene right away!)

Small groups give you the opportunity to provide immediate feedback to students. Is a child stuck on decoding a word? You can give immediate feedback on what to do. Is another student struggling to read fluently? Model how to do it!

Working with others can be hard in less structured activities. Small groups give students the opportunity to work with their peers and allow you to teach and model social interactions such as taking turns, listening to the viewpoints of others, etc.

Oftentimes, students feel more comfortable taking risks and attempting new reading strategies in a smaller group setting. Plus, you'll be right there to give praise and cheer them on!

When you're looking out at your 25+ learners in a whole group setting, it's hard to provide the scaffolding that quite a few of your students probably need. Small groups are the perfect place to provide appropriate support and the gradual release that builds confidence.

In a small group, you can closely monitor your students' progress and adjust your instruction based off of what your students need. During this time, you can take notes, give quick assessments, and monitor your students.

And.... if we haven't convinced you about the importance of small groups yet, here is one more reason.

If this was the only benefit of small groups, they would still be worth a large chunk of your day. Small groups give you the opportunity to get to know your students and for your students to get to know each other, and you! So many wonderful and thoughtful conversations happen in small groups. 

Whether you've been diligently working with small groups all year, but not seeing the results you want, or are just getting started, you may be asking yourself these questions...

 (Note: The rest of this post is focused on phonics based small groups. We realize there are many types of small groups that you may need to plan for, we will chat about those another day...)

Where do I start, or how do I start over?

First, you need to know what your students know. Let us caution you here… Don’t assume you know what they know. Take the time to screen your students with a phonics assessment. You may have access to an assessment through your literacy curriculum, but if not, there are free resources that will get you the information you need (example: CORE Phonics Survey). This may mean that you need to shut down your small groups for a bit, otherwise this process will take way too long. Plus, your students will probably shuffle into new groups anyway.

What do I do with all of this data?

Take a minute to congratulate yourself on finishing all of those assessments! We promise it was worth your time. Now that you have all of this data, it’s time to organize it. One option is to create a spreadsheet using the categories of the assessment and enter your students' scores (digraphs, blends, vowel teams, etc...).

Time to get the highlighters out! It always helps to color code when you're looking at so many rows and columns of numbers. For me, blue = totally mastered, green = solid understanding, yellow = needs some support, pink = explicit teaching needed. Look at your students' (now very colorful) scores and sort them into groups with similar results. Notice we didn’t say exactly the same results. You’re going to have kids who don’t perfectly fit into one group, and that’s okay.

There are a number of benefits to putting a child into a group that is starting with skills where they’ve already shown proficiency. They'll have a chance to shine and be a leader. They'll also have the opportunity to gain fluency, strengthen spelling skills, and have more brain power for comprehension and vocabulary work.

I've made my groups! Now what?

It's time to start planning! This is why the data you just collected is so important. It will help you with personalizing your instruction, but it also makes planning much easier.

Start with a great lesson plan template. We've been using and perfecting a small group lesson plan template for YEARS and we're sharing it with you for free! You already work hard enough, so this is our way of saying thank you for all that you do 💗

This may sound backward, and it is ... Start at the bottom of the lesson plan and work your way up. Pick a great decodable reader that focuses on the phonics feature your students need to master. From there, use the decodable to choose the sounds, words and sentence for encoding. Find a few words to start your word chains and pick the words you're going to use in your guided discovery.

By pulling from the decodable reader your students will read at the end of the lesson, you're building in opportunities for success. You kids will see the same sounds, words, phrases and sentences multiple times before they're asked to read a whole story.

 
Watch Your Students Find Success!

As you continue to work with students in small groups, you'll begin to see an increase in their confidence AND reading abilities!