Hilary Statum is a kindergarten and ESL teacher from Tennessee with over 15 years of teaching experience, and she also maintains the blog “Pencils to Pigtails,” about teaching and parenting. Since literacy is a key element of both kindergarten and ESL instruction, many of her teaching strategies are informed by the Science of Reading. In a recent webinar hosted by ESGI, Hilary shared her tips for utilizing small group instruction to teach reading within a larger classroom – and how ESGI makes it possible.
When should I utilize small group instruction?
Hilary emphasizes that teachers shouldn’t feel pressured to work in small groups for every last thing. She calls small groups an “expensive practice,” not in a financial sense, but “in terms of management, how much energy and time it takes to manage and how much planning has to go into that.” As such, you’re going to want to make the most of it when you do. Be selective about when to employ small groups, and don’t feel like you have to use them even when they don’t make sense. In some cases, you’ll find that breaking down into small groups takes more time and effort than it’s worth, when full-classroom instruction would work just as well.
How big should groups be, and how do I assign students to each?
Hilary recommends keeping group sizes to about 2-6 students. The more groups you have, the more moving parts there are to manage, so you may get the best results breaking the class into no more than three or four groups.
“Teachers have to design and deliver appropriate, differentiated instruction,” she says, “and then the teacher has to provide timely academic feedback in order for those small groups to really be effective.”
Grouping students effectively is key to making small group time count. Hilary advises teachers not to group students by text level or other sweeping, summative assessments (i.e., the previous year’s test scores). Instead, group students based on specific skills they need to work on. ESGI’s tracking and data analysis make it easy to identify students with similar areas for improvement.
What kind of activities should my small groups do?
Activities depend on the lesson and students’ current skill levels. The Science of Reading tells us that zooming in on granular, discrete skills is more effective than taking a top-down approach and trying to cover everything. Conveniently, ESGI was designed to track those individual skills so teachers can see where exactly students are struggling. Since you will have made your groups based on students’ grasp of those discrete literacy skills, you can then tailor your instruction to what each group of students needs.
If Hilary has a group, for instance, that are struggling with R-controlled vowels, she might start them off with word mapping. Slightly more advanced students might be ready to try decoding and encoding words with R-controlled vowels, and when students are close to mastering the concept she might have them read a book that uses words with R-controlled vowels.
She cautions teachers not to do too much talking in these small group settings. The greatest value of small group instruction is that unlike when teaching the full class, small groups let teachers observe each student and see how their skills are progressing. Watching and listening are the most important things to do in small group settings.
What should I give the rest of the class to do?
It’s all too easy to assign students busy work while you’re focusing on tailored instruction in small groups. Hilary advises against this, urging teachers to use that time productively. In her district, students must work on the computer with the district’s educational software. Time spent working in small groups allows students to complete that mandatory task while she’s instructing other students.
Since students are grouped by skills, she can assign them tasks that target those skills while she’s working with other groups. Hilary makes her life easier by keeping worksheets and other materials grouped by which skill(s) they target. “I could quickly go over and say, oh, we need to work on word families, or we need to work with our phonic stamps, and pull things as needed,” she said. The data you pull from ESGI can help inform which skills your students need to focus on, so you can prioritize gathering resources and activities that address those skills.
To hear more of Hilary’s advice on making the most of small group instruction, you can watch the webinar in full here.
About ESGI
ESGI simplifies foundational skill tracking, individualizes instruction, and streamlines data reporting with customizable tools and real-time insights to help educators support every student’s success.
Ready to give ESGI a try? Get a free 60-day trial and $75 off your first year of ESGI with code ESGI25.
