What is small group instruction?
The field of education loves buzzwords and the arena of small group instruction is no different. Centers, stations, Tier 2 intervention… they all provide ways for teachers to meet students where they are and support them in getting to where they need to be. The one thing that all these instructional methods have in common is that they happen in small groups. Some teachers and education researchers advocate for groups of 2-4 students (especially in cases of high-dosage tutoring) while others advocate for groups as large as 12 students. Many educators advocate for groups of around 6 students.
Why is small group instruction important for accelerating literacy skills for older students? Let’s discuss!
Differentiation
When facilitated and planned correctly, small groups allow teachers to differentiate instruction. Tailoring instruction to meet the needs of six students is often much easier than tailoring instruction to meet the needs of thirty-two students. If the goal of small group instruction is a gradual release from direct instruction to independent practice, small groups will eventually be able to practice a skill independently. This affords the teacher time to circulate to other small groups. A word of caution, though: Small group instruction does not mean pulling students out of the classroom for more individualized instruction. Small group instruction is also not confined to students with IEPs. Small group instruction has potential to accelerate literacy growth for all students, as long as they are grouped intentionally and flexibly.
Responding to assessment
It’s the first week of school. You give all your students a baseline assessment. Then what? Say you have a class of thirty-two students with Lexile bands that span ten different grade levels. How will you teach to all their needs at the same time? You won’t. However, according to the Iowa Reading Research Center, students make more progress in literacy when teachers focus on their skill needs compared to students in classrooms where teachers use traditional whole-class instruction (Validantes 2015).
Using assessment data, you can group students with similar needs as long as you flexibly regroup them when they show improvement either in formative or summative assessments.
Hearing students read
Hearing students read is important for assessing reading fluency. It is hard to hear students read when you have to focus on thirty-two students at the same time. It is also hard to get striving readers to read aloud when they are self-conscious about their reading. Small group instruction, when done correctly, can be the solution to all those challenges. In small group instruction, students can pair up and read to other students at similar skill levels while you, as the teacher, can circulate and take notes.
Giving students feedback
After you’ve heard students read and taken good notes, you can also leverage small group instruction as a way to give students individualized feedback on what they’re reading. In “Rethinking How We Teach Literacy in Tier 1: Targeted, Small-Group Instruction,” “Small-group instruction is necessary because our students need different levels of support, and their instruction should be designed to meet those needs, even in Tier 1. In other words, it can support educational equity, which is ‘not achieved when all children are treated ‘equally’ by receiving the same instruction, the same resources, and the same allocation of time’” (Diamond, 2023).
Small group instruction with Storyshares decodable chapter books
Our decodable chapter books were designed for small group instruction. That’s why we sell them as intervention sets where each student in a group of six (note: we can customize this to meet the needs/quantities of your small group) can have their own copy. When working in small groups, read one chapter at a time, pausing at the end of each chapter to make space for discussions about the text, moments within the text, and themes that extend beyond the text. We recommend always previewing vocabulary and phonics concepts before reading.
How to implement small group instruction
Okay! Now you know the what, the why, the when… What about the how? The hurdles to implementing small group instruction in middle school can often feel insurmountable. At Storyshares, we are well aware that there are a plethora of problems that widen the opportunity gap for older striving readers. Because of that, we believe in providing solutions that help to close that opportunity gap for older students. So, let’s put everything we discussed into practice. Here is a step-by-step guide to implementing small group instruction for older striving readers.
Step One: Assess students to determine their needs. This is sometimes referred to as a diagnostic assessment, where students’ skill gaps, as well as their strengths, are itemized, making it easy to differentiate based on them.
Step Two: Group students according to their needs. Depending on the lesson objective, you can also use this as an opportunity to further accelerate students by grouping them according to their strengths.
Step Three: Plan whole-group literacy lessons, identifying opportunities for small chunks of small group instruction. Or plan for small group instruction during whole-class strategic independent reading time.
Step Four: Teach small group lessons, focusing on getting to know the students in the small groups as readers. Include some time for specific direct instruction connected to the skill you grouped students based on, followed by lots of practice and time for feedback.
Step Five: Reassess to gauge progress and regroup accordingly.
Want to discuss how to use Storyshares decodable chapter books in small group settings? Reach out to us at info@storyshares.org, and learn more about our decodable books for older readers here.