RRS #7 | teachingblog

RRS #7: Chapter 5 – Small-Group Reading Instruction and Differentiation by Laura Robb

Page 141: Small group instruction can be very beneficial with differentiation because it allows teachers to create flexible groups that support students’ specific needs. It also allows group discussions that helps build students’ inferential thinking. I like this piece of information because it shows just how important small groups can be for students that are struggling. Teachers act like they have to create small groups because that’s what everyone else does, but they are actually very beneficial. The best part about small groups is that teachers can change them as the year goes on and they don’t have to be done by reading level or how much knowledge the student has in a subject.

In the book, the author gives an example of a reading lesson plan and how she would approach small group usage in her classroom. On page 142 I really like the part where she mentions that the kids can sign up to meet with her in between groups if they have question or need help. She does this after the students have read the text once through and I think this is very effective because it’s giving the students the chance to try to solve and answer their questions on their own and figure out the text, and then when they can’t they can still receive that little bit of extra help from the teacher. I would have never thought to give the students time to come to me and ask me questions they may have. This also ensure that students aren’t coming up to the small group that the teacher is working with and start asking random questions and interrupting.

The author also mentions on page 143 how she would remodel for the students what she is looking for from them even though she already has before. This is something you hear educators say often, continue to model specifically for the students what you expect of them, but I just felt it was important and I wanted to take a moment to highlight it. The author said the even modeling how you want your journal entries can be helpful in the end because then there is no confusion. If you give the students a free for all and expect something different from them, you can’t get upset when it’s not done the way that you imagined. This helps preventing frustration on everyone’s end.

To me, it was strange to see that the author suggested that you sometimes only need to split the class up into 2 groups to have a small group lesson. You don’t have to split the students into 4 groups based off of their reading levels to make the lower level students feel worse about themselves or give the higher levels students a confidence boost. But it worked well because I liked how the author said she would give the small groups partner work when working together. This is an idea I haven’t heard before and having the larger small groups and then breaking them down is very unique. I can see how it could be beneficial to the students. They are getting closer with their group members and will start to feel more comfortable around them because not only are they working in a small group, but they are also working closely with someone. This also allows the teacher to see each child specifically working with a partner and in a small group because everyone is at the same table.

The author mentioned that when choosing books for the class to read, it is important to choose a common genre and theme or issue that occurs in the book. This ensure that the students don’t feel as if they’re being sorted by their abilities and levels. The author then went on to say how you don’t want to have a numerous amount of small groups because you can’t guarantee that you will be able to meet with them and give them all the same amount of time. After this, the author said how departmentalized teachers tend to struggle with giving students an equal amount of time and attention so the fewer the groups, the better. I wanted to know if this would still apply to classrooms that aren’t departmentalized. Would the author still suggest a group limit if the teacher sees the kids all day, every day? This teacher gets the chance to connect with the students more frequently than a departmentalized teacher would, so they are able to tell when the students are struggling more or are understanding the content. Does this also change how you would group the students?

I think it is extremely important though that the author pointed out that you can create groups based off of the smallest thing. On page 145, the author says that you can create groups for depending students’ knowledge of applying a specific reading strategy to a text, helping students link issues to texts, or studying text structure for informational text or literature. This shows that small groups don’t have to be determined by the children’s levels and they don’t have to be given a set label that makes students feel bad about themselves. I can relate to this because in eighth grade my teachers placed our entire English and Social Studies class in groups based off of our levels and kept us there the entire year. I was placed in the lower level group with the students that were known to have bead behavior and cause scenes in class and at lunch. I’m not saying that I was a genius or a gifted student but at the time of the placements, I had a concussion. I wasn’t accurately placed into a proper level for me, so I ended up acting the way my teachers had labeled me. I like the idea of grouping students together that need help with one specific piece of math or reading, rather than their levels because students’ levels change all of the time. You can’t base one group off of one day, which could happen to be the child’s bad day.

The author mentioned that it is important to have a big picture created for the small groups to work effectively. She also said how you want to keep track of what group met when and for how long so you never forget about a group and the instruction that you have planned for them. It is also important to create a guideline or list of requirements that you have of the students. This meaning how many pages are they going to read and by when will it be due. This allows the students to stay on task and keep up with the reading, rather than fall behind and not be able to participate well in small group discussions. I wanted to know if all of this applies to elementary school. The author specializes in middle school and older students, so I was wondering if everything that she is talking about is still manageable for a first grade classroom rather than a seventh grade classroom.

There was a section in the book about staying in the time frame that teachers have given themselves to work with one group. Many teachers struggle to keep the students that aren’t in the group on tasks without getting up and leaving the small group. The author suggested that teachers ask students to share and discuss a completed journal entry instead of a personal experience they had over the weekend or to connect an issue that they’ve dealt with to the text, rather than allowing tangents to occur. It is important to tell the students what they will be focusing on that day so they can remember the tasks and realize when they aren’t doing them properly due to talking.

The author gave some fun ways to assess students at the end of the chapter and I thought they were interesting and students would enjoy them. I know at any age kids want to have fun and they can do this with reader’s theaters. The author then gave guidelines for students to use in a reader’s theater which was very helpful so see how students would actually do this and how it would be graded to see if small group work helped the students. She also mentioned that talk show interviews work well and using journal entries to measure specifically the reading strategy that the small group was working on.