small group lesson plans

Classroom Q&A

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In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

What Are the Best Strategies for Small-Group Instruction?

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(This is the first post in a four-part series.)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What are your recommendations for how best to set up and organize small groups in classroom instruction?

Many teachers find that well-organized student small-group work facilitates learning and effective classroom management.

It’s the “well-organized” part that can trip many of us up, though.

This four-part series will share “tried-and-true” strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of this kind of instruction.

Today, Valentina Gonzalez, Olivia Montero Petraglia, Jenny Vo, and Jennifer Mitchell provide their suggestions.

You might also be interested in a previous series on small-group instruction , as well as Best Posts On The Basics Of Small Groups In The Classroom .

‘Teach the Routine’

Valentina Gonzalez is a former classroom teacher with over 20 years in education serving also as a district facilitator for English-learners, a professional-development specialist for ELs, and as an educational consultant. She is the co-author of Reading & Writing with English Learners and works with teachers of ELs to support language and literacy instruction. Her work can be found on Seidlitz Education and on MiddleWeb . You can reach her through her website or on Twitter @ValentinaESL :

Image by Valentina Gonzalez

I didn’t learn overnight how to make small-group instruction work for my students and for me. When I taught mainstream language arts (reading and writing in elementary school), we planned together as a team. Planning went very quickly because the more experienced teachers would bring their lesson plans from previous years and tell us “newbies” what we would be teaching. We all taught the same thing and mostly the same way.

It quickly became clear that teaching in a whole-group setting wasn’t meeting the needs of all my students. Some students breezed through what I taught because they already knew it. Others had no idea what just happened. And most of the time I felt like students did not understand their role in learning. We were all just going through motions.

It wasn’t long before small-group instruction organically formed in my classroom. After teaching a whole-group lesson and formatively assessing, I divided the class. For example, at the end of a lesson. I asked students to write a ticket out or gave them five questions to answer on a sticky note. Based on their answers, I quickly formed three groups for our next lesson; one for Enrichment, one for Guidance, and one for Reteach.

Over the next couple of days, during independent reading, I gathered students in these small groups to conduct a mini-lesson on the topic. It was not perfect, but I could tell that my students were beginning to grow rather than flounder or become bored.

Here’s what I learned along the way.

1. Teach the routine.

This is make or break. If students understand what small-group time is going to look and sound like, they will be more successful with it. Before you begin implementing small groups, hold a lesson with students telling them what small groups are and why you are doing them. If possible, model for the class what a small group will look like AND what the rest of the class will be doing. By teaching the routine, you set students up for success. On the other hand, if you don’t teach the routine, don’t be disappointed if while you are working with your small group the remainder of the class is off task. Clarity is key!

A few things to teach students about the routine are:

• the time frame for instruction
• what you expect from the time
• the acceptable noise level
• how students can move about
• when it’s acceptable to interrupt the small group
• how to interrupt the small group

2. Teach students what to do independently.

It’s possible that one of the biggest reasons why some teachers abandon small groups is because they become frustrated when they feel they’ve lost control of the classroom. To avoid this, clarity in goals and expectations for the end result is a must. Be as explicit as possible with instructions before sending students off to work on their own.

Tips for teaching students what to do independently:

• write out the goals on chart paper or under a document camera and keep them visible during the lesson
• show examples and nonexamples of end products if applicable
• give options/choice

Keep in mind that while you work with small groups, the rest of the class can be working on various learning tasks. In primary grades, some teachers implement “centers” or “rotations” while gathering small groups. These can be described as short and interesting learning activities that students move through tied to previously learned skills. Older students can be reading or writing independently, working on research, problem solving, experimenting, or more!

3. Keep groups fluid.

These are your small groups. As Penny Kittle says, “Follow the child.” Don’t get too firm about them. Do what students need and keep flexibility alive. Today, “Jasmin” may be in the enrichment group but next week, she may need reteaching when we move to another topic. Small groups are fluid. They move and change with the time, topic, and needs of the learners.

There are so many reasons to hold small groups. Your small groups might include:

• strategy lessons in reading/writing/math
• shared reading /writing
• phonics review
• guided reading
• reteaching/preteaching/enrichment (any subject)
• conferring reading/writing/math
• language development

Small groups are commonly seen in reading, but small-group instruction is useful cross-curricularly. The nature of a small group lends itself to a smaller student-teacher ratio allowing for students to share responses more frequently than in large-group settings. Teachers can use this time to gauge understanding, provide timely feedback, take anecdotal notes, and build stronger relationships with students. English-learners benefit greatly from small group instruction with their teachers and peers.

‘Practice, Practice, Practice’

Olivia Montero Petraglia began her teaching career as an upper-primary bilingual teacher in San Diego. Over the last 23 years, she has served in leadership, as an instructional coach, language-acquisition specialist, consultant, and teacher in international schools in Colombia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Laos:

To be fully present and have quality instructional time with small groups of students is golden. While we all know what the research says about the positive impact of small-group instruction, it can be challenging to set up and manage.

Something I wished I would have understood earlier in my teaching career is that setting small-group work is a process that requires an investment in time and a collaborative classroom-community effort. A carefully co-crafted approach can transform small-group work into much more than just ideal conditions for differentiated instruction. It is also a great way to build community and help students develop skills such as self management, time management, and independence. Dedicating two to three weeks at the start of the school year to learn about your students while practicing different aspects of small-group work routines will gain you lots of mileage throughout the remaining school year.

Grouping students

When I start the year, I usually plan heterogeneous groups to work through fun, low-stakes activities. This allows me to notice several learning behaviors at a time. By keeping these initial sessions short (8 -12 minutes), valuable data can be collected quickly and minimize the pressure to form “perfect” groups straight away. What you notice from each day’s session will help you regroup students and identify learning objectives for upcoming sessions. As the weeks go by, you will have opportunities to triangulate a range of data to inform different groupings and learning objectives linked to the curriculum; however, you will have had the opportunity to establish dispositions and a sense of community that will help support small-group work for the duration of the school year.

Invite students into the process

Be explicit when sharing the “why” for small-group work. A simple, yet critical initial exercise is to facilitate a circle-time discussion about small-group work. As students share their ideas, record responses on chart paper so that you can refer back to their plan as needed throughout the year.

• What good things can happen as a result of small-group learning opportunities?
• What things might get in the way of quality group work and what can help us to have the best small-group learning opportunities?

Visual guides

Create anchor charts or digital slides to display bullet point steps for each session. If a student is not sure of what to do after you have provided instructions or a mini-lesson, instead of telling them, point to the visual. Over time, you will condition students to reference the visual instead of asking you. For younger students, you can use numbered images as reminders. This one simple step can be such a game changer.

Prepare checklists

Create a spreadsheet for yourself of weekly or daily “look fors” to make it easy to record quick notes and keep you focused on key data. This also helps keep track of how frequently you meet with students.

Practice, practice, practice:

Think Vygotsky’s “i + 1.” Introduce different aspects of small-group work one step at a time. For example, to start, provide the whole class with an independent activity that will keep them engaged for the duration of the time needed for you to meet with one or two small groups. As students begin to understand expectations and routines, gradually add more complexity to the dynamics of small-group work sessions.

• Discuss and post a “What to do when I‘m done” list ahead of time that includes low prep activities such as independent reading, journal writing, or practice for skills previously learned. No need for students to ever be off task even when they finish work.
• Debrief at the end of every small-group practice session. Prompt students to offer feedback for feed forward for improvement during the next session. Celebrate successes and name what students are getting right, and you are more likely to see it again and again.
• Use music as a scaffold for transitioning. Starting a two- or three-minute song can cue students to move around, gather needed materials, get to their learning spaces, check in with others, and aim to be ready by the end of a song. Resist giving instructions; let the music do the work. Keep practicing until everyone knows what to do. Kids love this, and with carefully selected music, it can also be a mood changer.

I used to think that I couldn’t start small-group work until I had time to get to know my students better. Now I understand that there is no better way to get to know students than engaging with them. Small-group interactions make it possible to take careful note of students’ learning behaviors, strengths, and academic gaps.

‘Flexible & Differentiated Learning’

Jenny Vo earned her B.A. in English from Rice University and her M.Ed. in educational leadership from Lamar University. She has worked with English-learners during all of her 26 years in education and is currently the Houston area EL coordinator for International Leadership of Texas. Jenny proudly serves as the president of TexTESOL IV and works to advocate for all English-learners. She loves learning from her #PLN on Twitter so feel free to follow her @JennyVo15.

What is small-group instruction? Small-group instruction is when you teach the students in small groups ranging from 2-6 students. It usually follows whole-group instruction. There are many benefits of small-group instruction. It is effective because the teaching is focused on the needs of the students, with the goal of growing their academic skills.

Small-group instruction provides opportunities for flexible and differentiated learning. With the smaller number of students, students have more chances to participate. Teachers are able to monitor the students better, thus providing better and more individualized feedback and support. Small-group instruction can be used in all content classes and is beneficial for students of all levels.

How do you best set up and organize small groups? There are a variety of ways you can set up and organize small groups. How you do it depends on your objective and goal for the lesson or activity. Some ways you can group students include: by ability, strategy, expert/interest groups, cooperative tasks, and student choice The three setups I use the most are by ability, by strategy/skill, and by interest.

Grouping by ability : You can group your students by ability, such as by reading level or language-proficiency level. Having students of the same ability in the same group will allow the teacher to provide lessons and activities that are more focused and targeted to the needs of the students at that level. There is less pressure because the students know that they are on the same playing ground as the other group members. For English-learners at that same level, they will feel less intimidated to take chances to speak.

Grouping by strategy/skil l: Strategy groups are great when you want to provide instruction on a specific skill or strategy. Let’s say you gave an assessment. Looking at the data from the assessment, you see that certain students need more instruction and practice with a certain skill or strategy. Instead of reteaching the whole class, you can group together students based on the skill they need to work on. You can have reading groups working on inferencing, main idea, or summary. You can have math groups working on multistep problems, graphing, or data analysis. Your science groups can be working on food chains/webs, force and motion, or adaptation. Strategy groups very much rely on data. Groups should be short term and should be very fluid.

Expert/interest groups: Grouping students by subject knowledge or interest is a great way to work with small groups for projects. These types of small groups are perfect for science and social studies classes. Because students are grouped based on areas of interests, they consist of students of varying ability levels. With these groups, it is best that there is a cooperative grouping structure where roles are assigned so that responsibilities are equally divided. In that way, one or two students are not doing all the work or taking over the project and not letting the others be involved. English-learners can benefit from being in this type of group because they can share their knowledge since they may know more about the topic than the other members. It also gives them opportunities to improve their language by hearing more advanced students speak.

What are the other students doing while I’m in small-group instruction? I hear this question a lot when there is discussion about implementing small groups. My answer is: They should be working on activities that you have planned where they can work by themselves, with a partner, or in a small group that will allow you to focus on the group you are working with. For the language arts block, they can be reading and responding to their reading independently or working on their writing. For math, you can set up different workstations with activities focusing on different skills for review. Workstations can also be used for science and social studies class. Giving students a menu of activities to choose from is also a very effective way to keep the rest of the class engaged while you do small groups.

If you have not implemented small-group instruction in your classroom, I encourage you to try it. You will come to see the benefits to the students with your own eyes. With anything new, do it in small steps. Try one way of grouping. Try it once a week and slowly add more time. It is a great instructional approach to add to your teaching toolbox!

Student Leadership

Jennifer Mitchell teaches ELs in Dublin, Ohio. Connect with her on Twitter: @readwritetech or on her blog :

The myriad benefits of partner and group work are clear (particularly for ELs), but a system of purposeful, long-term groups with student leaders can transform classroom culture. Leading groups of 3-5 classmates for a quarter, semester, or year, my “squad leaders” (a structure and term I borrowed from my years in marching band) start group discussions and keep them going, remind their squad members about materials and on-task work as necessary, and, perhaps most importantly, build our community by demonstrating genuine caring for their squad members. As role models for their classmates, these leaders challenge themselves not just to grow academically but also to step out of their comfort zones and hone their leadership skills.

I encourage them to use purposeful small talk and tap into identity-related assignments, just as I do as a teacher, to forge strong connections. They also serve as points of contact between me and their classmates, providing clarification or help to their squad members when possible, notifying me of any concerns, and even pointing out when their squad members excel.

Choosing leaders :

The success of this structure hinges on the effectiveness and buy-in of the squad leaders. It’s tempting to choose students who are academically (or linguistically) strong and/or socially popular, and while these can be great characteristics in a leader, they are not as important as the student’s desire to improve the classroom culture and grow personally. In fact, it’s students who care deeply for others and/or have the personal drive to challenge themselves who are most likely to become effective squad leaders.

Through careful observation during the first month of school, I can usually pick out a few students in each class who will be my leaders. It’s so essential to have the right students that if I can’t identify at least a couple strong leaders in a given class, I do not move forward with implementation. I’ve tried and failed to push students who weren’t ready, and the whole structure loses credibility too quickly. It’s better to stick with typical groups (possibly implementing squads later) than to end up with a class that will never buy into the vision because they’ve seen it fail with leaders who didn’t follow through. (For this reason, it’s essential to put careful work into supporting and developing your leaders throughout the year!)

Once I have my leaders in mind, I share my vision for squads with the whole class and invite anyone who is interested to complete an online application form . I want everyone to feel they had the opportunity, and it’s interesting to see who applies. After the application has been posted for a couple days, I talk individually with any leaders I’d identified who haven’t applied yet. It’s incredible to see the light in a student’s eyes upon hearing that I want them to be a leader. In fact, some of my best leaders were students who initially doubted their own leadership ability and needed encouragement to take on the role, but their determination and love for others drove them to have a real impact.

Implementation :

Once I select the leaders, I invite them to a special meeting to introduce the role in more detail, and each leader reflects and sets goals based on their application responses. Next, it’s important to discuss the vision of the squad structure with the whole class before seating them with their new squads. I share how powerful this structure was for me and my friends in marching band in terms of personal growth, group excellence, and social-emotional support. Then we split into squads for community-building activities, and from then on, the squads are together for nearly everything. They collaborate, share and reflect on their work together, engage in discussions, and participate in deeper connection-building activities with the squad leaders serving as the glue that binds each group ever more closely. Frequent leader meetings, conferring, and mini-tasks challenge leaders to reflect and problem-solve. Within a classroom culture built around reflection and goal-setting, a focus on learning, and SEL, the squads grow into supportive communities that provide a stronger sense of purpose and belonging in our classroom.

Thanks to Valentina, Olivia, Jenny, and Jennifer for contributing their thoughts.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo .

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching .

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Small group lesson plan template.

This lesson plan template guides the teacher to document how a small group lesson plan may be executed. Lesson planning for group work is often very challenging. It is important for students to experience working in groups with peers that are within different learning ranges. This small group lesson plan template has the teacher lesson plan for group work that may take place in his or her class. This is a thorough small group lesson plan template. This small group lesson plan template may be used for a variety of grade levels.

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The 90 Min Literacy Block: Small Group Instruction

This is the second post in a blog series on the SoR 90-Minute Literacy Block and it focuses on small group instruction. In it, I discuss why small group instruction is important and explain how t o group your students for small group instruction. I identify literacy skills to teach in small group and offer a list of science of reading-aligned resources designed for small group instruction.  Finally, I leave you with a FREE, downloadable small group lesson planning template for kindergarten, first or second grade.

In my last post, I outlined a suggested schedule for your 90-minute science of reading-aligned literacy block.   Today I am excited to focus on just one part of the block, your small group instruction . 

Small group instruction is one of the key ways we can support our students and help increase achievement, but it isn’t always easy to pull off. It requires careful lesson planning, regular shuffling of student grouping, and strong management.  

Today I’m excited to provide you with information and resources that will help you successfully implement small groups in your classroom.  I’ll first share why small group instruction is important and explain how to group your students.  I’ll then identify specific skills that you should teach in small groups and offer a list of science of reading-aligned resources designed for small group instruction.  Finally, I’ll leave you with a FREE, downloadable small group lesson plan template to help you get your groups up and running! 

Why is Small Group Instruction Important? 

Research has found that small group instruction has a significant impact on student learning.  Small groups allow you to provide explicit, targeted instruction to students based on their identified needs. It is an opportunity for students to receive the additional teaching and practice that is often needed for them to master the skills we teach.  

Additionally, small group instruction allows a teacher to monitor student actions more closely and to provide frequent and individualized feedback.  Correct responses receive immediate and specific reinforcement, while incorrect responses should be met with immediate corrective feedback.

Teaching in small groups allows you to perform informal assessments and collect data that helps drive your instruction. Watch closely as your students attempt a task to get a clear sense of their understandings and misconceptions.  

Finally, students love their time in small groups.  Of course, they love having your full attention. The immediate feedback you provide helps to build a connection and can boost students’ confidence.  

How to Group Students for Small Group Instruction

Many teachers are unsure of how to group their students since we have begun to move away from leveled readers.  The science of reading tells us that small groups should be grouped and regrouped by a shared skill deficit . 

To properly group your students, you need a strong assessment system.  You need data from a universal screener to identify students who might be at risk of difficulties in learning. This will give you a general sense of how to group students.  Diagnostic assessments are then used to confirm the initial screening results.  They help you to refine your groupings by determining a student’s specific difficulties.  Finally, weekly progress monitoring and observation will help you adjust your groups.  They are flexible.  As needs change, groups change.    

Phonics Screeners for Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd Grade

I recommend these Phonics Screeners bundle for Kindergarten 1st and 2nd grade to assess your students’ phonics skills. This resource includes a variety of screeners and has everything you need to group students working at a Kindergarten, first, or second-grade level.

This bundle of K-2 assessments includes phonics screeners for:

• Phonemic Awareness Screener (for K and 1st grade)
• Letter & Grapheme Identification
• Reading Survey
• Spelling Survey
• Autofill Student Data Trackers and MORE!!

In addition to helping you group students, these screeners can be used as a diagnostic tool at reading benchmark periods (BOY, MOY, EOY), for report cards, or as a pre-assessment and post-assessment to measure student growth.

Click here to take a closer look at everything included in the K-2 Phonics Screeners Bundle !

Skills to Teach in Small Groups

In a small group, you provide students with targeted remediation and review that they need to master the skill you have identified as their need. Skills you will work on in small groups include: 

• Phonemic awareness
• Decoding and Fluency
• Comprehension
• Word study/spelling

Science of Reading-Aligned Activities for Small Group Instruction

The following resources are designed to be used in small groups.  They are engaging, LOW-PREP activities that target the skills you will teach in small groups AND they are aligned to the science of reading. 

Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plans for Kindergarten and 1st Grade

My Science of Reading-aligned Phonemic Lesson Plans for Kindergarten and First Grade students have EVERYTHING you need to bring effective phonemic awareness instruction to your small groups!  

The resource includes:

💕 Phonemic Awareness Lesson Plans Aligned to a Scope and Sequence

With this resource, you’ll get lesson plans laid out in a weekly format.

Each daily lesson plan includes a warm-up for the target skill and three activities. 

• Phoneme Segmenting : students practice breaking apart each word and identifying each phoneme
• Phoneme Blending : students hear a sequence of phonemes and put them together to identify the word
• Connecting Graphemes to Phonemes : students practice connecting the phonemes in a spoken word to the letters (graphemes) that represent those sounds.

💕 Picture Word Mats

The picture word mats provide a visual representation of the words in the Connecting Phonemes to Graphemes section.  This support helps students to build meaning of the words .

💕 Screener Assessments

You’ll get a two-part screener for each unit that will identify whether each student can segment and blend phonemes, as well as a spelling inventory assessment that would be given whole-group.

💕 Class Data Tracker and MORE!!

You can read more about the importance of phonemic awareness and download a free sample of this resource here .

Word Mapping – Connecting Phonemes to Graphemes

Word mapping is a physical way to represent the relationship between the phonemes and graphemes.  It allows students to physically connect or match the letters with the sounds they represent. Ultimately, it helps build word recognition and decoding skills that improve fluency in both reading and writing . Students find word-mapping activities ​​highly engaging because they have both visual and kinesthetic aspects.

My printable and digital Word Mapping Resource  has EVERYTHING you need to get students mapping words in your classroom. This resource also includes mapping boards and word image cards for your small-group instruction.

Phonics Word Sort s

Word sorts require students to think about how words work by drawing their attention to common spelling patterns.  Students receive a set of words that all have something in common. They must identify the feature and sort them accordingly.

Research on information-processing tells us that students need to spend time elaborating and summarizing their new learning in order to store it in their long-term memory. For this reason, the “what did you notice” section of this activity is key, as is the discussion that may take place after the word sort. Both help students to verbalize the new learning that applies to spelling.

My digital and printable phonics word sorts include  two levels  of sorts: whole words and words with the missing target spelling pattern to assign to your students. Students will look for common spelling patterns, sort, then communicate what they notice and have learned about the words they’ve sorted. You can take a closer look at them here .

Decodable Passages or Decodable Books with Comprehension Questions

The science of reading shows us that the connection between what our students learn in phonics and what they read is imperative for building a strong foundation in early reading.  The text in these decodable books and decodable passages resources are a phonics-based controlled text that contain target phonics skill words, previously taught phonics skill words and irregular high-frequency words.  The comprehension questions help to bring discussion about text and writing into your small group instruction.  The resources also include activities for before, after and during reading.

While these two separate resources do follow the same research-based scope and sequence, they do not include the same texts. The passages and stories are different, giving you more options for your instruction.

Dictation Practice

Dictation is a whole or small group activity that offers students guided spelling practice. It is a systematic way for you to connect the skills you teach in reading to student writing.  Just as decodable texts allow students to apply the phonics skills you have taught to their reading, dictation practice allows them to apply the skills to their writing.

Dictation is not an assessment. It allows you to check students’ understanding of sound-spelling correspondences. Your dictation exercise will contain the sounds they are just learning, as well as review words from previous weeks.  Dictation gives them the extra practice they need to reach mastery.  When there are errors, provide immediate corrective feedback.  

If you are looking for a simple way to bring dictation practice into your small groups my  Yearlong Dictation Resource  for Kindergarten, first and/or second grade is all you need!

This resource follows a research-based scope and sequence and includes dictation practice activities for each week of the school year.

Each week includes 2 teacher guides that highlight the week’s focus skill and previously learned phonics skills. In addition, students get practice with heart words (irregularly spelled high-frequency words) in the sentence portion.

A lesson outline for teacher guidance and sample lessons are also included. The resource includes a variety of student dictation recording sheets so you can choose the one that works best for your students.

Take a closer look at this Yearlong Dictation Resource  here .

“What are the other kids doing while I work with my small group?” 

This is is a question that gets asked frequently!  The answer is they are engaging in intentional literacy center activities that reinforce skills you have already taught .  These activities are not new learning, they are not skills the students are still acquiring.  They are skills that you have seen them perform successfully and accurately when they are with you.  This ensures they can work independently and you can focus your attention on your small group. 

Now you may be wondering…if they can already perform the skills successfully, then why do they need more practice?  The truth is, we often underestimate the amount of practice and repetition it takes for students to master the skills we teach .  According to Wiley Blevins, in order for a skill to stick, it must be purposefully and systematically reviewed for 4-6 weeks.  Literacy centers offer students the practice and review they need for mastery.   

Keep in mind, that literacy centers and rotations are not something you just hop right into.  They involve routines and expectations that must be explicitly taught and practiced.  Take a look at this blog post for tips on how to introduce your literacy centers and build independence. 

I know I have shared a lot of information today!  To help you make sense of it all, I am happy to share a FREE downloadable planning template for small group instruction. 

Drop your email below to instantly download these editable small-group planning templates

I hope the information and resources I’ve shared here today will help you plan and implement effective small group instruction in your classroom. Be on the lookout for the next posts in this series on the SoR 90 Minute Literacy Block where I’ll focus on whole group word recognition instruction and whole group language comprehension instruction.

Wouldn’t it be incredible if planning, prepping, and teaching your small groups….was as easy as click, print, and teach?

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PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Differentiated Instruction

How to Implement Small-Group Instruction in the Classroom

With a tightly-packed teaching schedule, how do you find the time to address the needs of all students? In my time as an elementary teacher, I’ve found that small-group instruction is a surefire way to carve out time for individualized instruction in my classroom. Through small-group instruction, I’m able to address my students’ needs through focused and targeted lessons that help them confidently master new concepts and skills.

In this article I’ll explore the benefits of small-group instruction and focus on small-group instruction for the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. I will also make note of strategies for grouping students, tips for classroom management, steps for implementation, and best practices for small group. I’ve even included a lesson plan template for small-group instruction to support you in implementing this powerful teaching approach in your classroom.

What Is Small-Group Instruction?

In small-group instruction, the classroom teacher pulls a small number of students aside to teach a particular skill or concept. The group size can range from two to six students. The teacher will bring students to an area in the class designated for small-group instruction. Typically, teachers will seat students at the teacher table, which may be a kidney-shaped table where the teacher sits at the center of the table while the students are seated around the table. In this area, the teacher might have manipulatives and instructional tools, like pointers or dry erase boards, readily accessible to use during a small-group lesson. The image below shows a possible small-group area set up.

As the teacher is leading the small-group instruction, the rest of the class is engaged in independent work or centers. A small-group lesson can be anywhere between 15-45 minutes long depending on grade level and students’ needs. Small-group instruction usually takes place after whole-group instruction. A teacher can meet with multiple small groups in a day and have the small-group instruction be part of the daily center rotation. Small-group instruction can be implemented during the ELA block as well as during other subject areas, like math . In some instances, small-group instruction may serve as Tier 2 intervention in the RTI process .

Note, having students engage in group work is not the same as small-group instruction. During group work, students are working collaboratively while the teacher oversees the activity. Small-group instruction, however, is teacher led and directed.

How Does Small-Group Instruction Help Students and Teacher

The structure of a small group provides more opportunities for differentiated instruction, therefore offering numerous benefits to both students and teachers.

For students, small-group instruction can be a confidence booster. During a whole-group lesson, some students may feel intimated to share a thought or ask a question, especially if they aren’t understanding the concept at hand. A small-group setting can make students feel more at ease to participate.

Small-group instruction allows teachers to observe and work with students more closely. Due to the smaller teacher-student ratio, teachers have more time to evaluate strengths and challenges and provide tailored lessons to meet students’ needs. Additionally, small-group instruction makes it possible for teachers to pre-teach and reteach concepts or skills, plus provide extra practice to students who need it.

How to Group Students for Small-Group Instruction

When planning small-group instruction, you might be thinking “How should I group my students?” For grouping students in the ELA block, I use literacy assessments for phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, or reading comprehension to identify students’ specific literacy needs. Form flexible and fluid small groups based on formative and summative assessment data, grouping students based on academic interest or needs. But allow students to move in and out of these groups using observational data from your lessons as well. Some students may be focused on word recognition skills like phonemic awareness or phonics, while others are working on becoming more fluent with these skills. Your more advanced readers may be working on vocabulary and reading comprehension.

When determining where to place students in small groups, identify what students need and create goals by thinking about how students progress in the following areas, which are ordered in the process of how students learn to read:

• Phonemic awareness (K-1)
• Comprehension

Tips for Classroom Management During Small-Group Instruction

Effective small-group instruction calls for effective classroom management. Consider the following classroom management tips when implementing small-group instruction in your class.

Set a Schedule

Create a schedule that supports differentiation in the classroom. You want to make time for both whole- and small-group instruction. Allocating time and resources for small-group instruction is an obstacle for many teachers, and by building a schedule with time built in for grade-level whole-group instruction, and opportunities for differentiated small-group instruction, you are setting yourself up for success. Generally, elementary ELA classrooms have anywhere between 90-120 minutes for ELA instruction. Below are sample schedules to use with HMH Into Reading that support ample time for whole-group and small-group instruction, as well as time for students to work independently and collaboratively. Remember that being flexible with timing is important as some days a specific instructional component may warrant more time and attention.

Establish Expectations and Routines

The first six weeks of school is an ideal time to set classroom expectations and establish instructional routines for whole-group, small-group, and independent work time. Plan and discuss how students will move within the classroom, how they will access materials, and even how they will interact with other students. You’ll want to think through all the moments in your ELA block, and how you want that to look in your classroom. Remember to include routines for whole-group as well because if your entire ELA block runs smoothly, you’ll have sufficient time for small-group instruction. Doing so will ensure you foster an environment where students are actively learning throughout your ELA block, including your small-group instruction. Some examples of routines and procedures to implement during the first six weeks of school to ensure effective and efficient small-group instruction are:

• How we meet at the carpet for whole-group instruction
• How to gather and return dry erase boards for whole-group instruction
• How to come to attention
• How to turn and talk with a partner
• How to move from center to center during center rotations

Steps for Implementing Small-Group Instruction

Setting up for small-group instruction requires having a plan of action. After all, you need to be ready to meet the needs of each group. I’ve detailed seven steps to help you smoothly run small-group instruction.

Step 1: Assess Student Needs

To be able to provide targeted instruction, you need to first and foremost know where students are. Make use of pre-assessments and formative assessments to identify students’ needs and to determine how you will support your students.

Step 2: Establish Learning Goals

Each student will have a unique set of needs. Utilize the data recorded to establish clear and measurable learning objectives for each student.

Step 3: Plan Instruction

Develop targeted lessons and activities that align with students’ learning goals and cater to students' needs and abilities. Further down, you can find a lesson plan template to use to plan your small-group instruction. When you are planning instruction, make note of any supplies you may need,such as letter tiles for students working on phonics or dry erase board and markers for students working on comprehension.

Step 4: Group Students

The data you’ve recorded will also help you group students. Refer to the grouping strategies mentioned earlier to organize students into small groups.

Step 5: Provide Instruction

Deliver focused and differentiated instruction to each group, targeting the skills students need support with.

Step 6: Monitor Progress

Be sure to continuously assess student progress; this can be done through formative assessments. Adjust instruction as needed and provide students with personalized feedback.

Step 7: Reflect and Refine

Regularly reflect on the effectiveness of small-group lessons. You can even ask feedback from students to adjust and improve upon future lessons.

Small-Group Instruction Best Practices

Follow these best practices to successfully implement small-group instruction in your classroom.

Be Flexible

Flexibility is key to successful small-group instruction. Lessons may need to be adapted to best meet students' needs. And, as mentioned before, groups may change based on how students improve throughout the year.

Take Notes When Teaching

Small-group instruction is a perfect time to observe and learn about your students. When teaching, be sure to jot down notes on how students are progressing and what areas they need more support in. You could also collect information when students are engaged in a small-group instructional activity, like word building. In these moments, students might reflect on their learning and give additional insight on what to include in future small-group lessons.

Assess Students Regularly

The data you collect is vital to small-group instruction and will guide what skills to cover and how to group students. So, take the time to periodically assess students. Use different types of assessments, like quizzes, exit tickets, or a benchmark exam, to gather evidence of student learning. From there, you can best provide targeted instruction to your students.

Find additional small-group reading strategies here .

Lesson Plan Template for Small-Group Instruction

When I’m planning small-group instruction, I use data to drive decisions, define clear goals for each small group before planning instruction, and align these goals with grade level specific literacy outcomes. I specifically draw from Anita Archer’s explicit instruction model as well as the gradual release of responsibility model, also referred to as “I Do, We Do, You Do.” Using these models, I’m able to give students the opportunity to see me model, participate in guided practice, and practice a skill with my feedback. Check out this small-group lesson plan template that I use, which supports explicit instruction and incorporates the gradual release model.

By integrating best practices, classroom management techniques, and drawing upon evidence-based strategies, we as teachers can create a classroom setting that fosters student growth through agency and empowerment. Our end goal is to create skilled learners who can make meaning and build their knowledge of the world around them. Effective small-group instruction will empower our students with the necessary skills to succeed.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of HMH.

HMH Into Reading has everything teachers need in one place to facilitate systematic and explicit whole- and small-group reading instruction.

Get our free guide to differentiated instruction.

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The Science of Reading: a Phonics Lesson Plan Template for Small Groups

By Alanna (Lani) Mednick , Literacy Partnerships Manager

The Science of Reading “is a vast, interdisciplinary body of scientifically-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing.” This research — carried out across the world and spanning over five decades — demonstrates that all children learn to read the same way.

Therefore, literacy programs that deliver systematic, explicit instruction and deliberate practice based on the Science of Reading can help learners of all abilities and linguistic backgrounds learn to read successfully. Helping children develop this skill early on can influence their entire lives — from whether or not they graduate from high school to what career they pursue.

CORE Learning has developed a range of instructional materials for teachers based on the Science of Reading — including the six-step explicit phonics lesson plan below (with a downloadable freebie). Use this small group lesson plan to help students develop their decoding and phonics skills.

The 6-Step Explicit Phonics Instruction Lesson Plan

The ability to identify the relationship between letters (or spellings) and sounds is known as phonics, and it’s the first step in learning to decode — i.e., correctly applying the knowledge of sound-spelling relationships to pronounce words.

To understand the role of phonics and decoding in reading, refer to Scarborough’s Reading Rope. The rope is a system for explaining how the different “strands” of reading are interconnected yet independent and how they all weave together to support fluent skilled reading.

The upper strands of the rope are composed of language comprehension elements such as background knowledge, vocabulary, and verbal reasoning.

The lower strands of the rope are factors that influence word recognition, which include phonological awareness, decoding, and sight recognition of familiar words. These skills are fundamental to reading and are a prerequisite for building reading comprehension for all learners — including multilingual learners and students with learning differences. Once students are fluent readers, reading also builds language comprehension skills.

Teachers should be aware that teaching decoding skills early on is essential for all learners, as it prevents them from falling behind later. Even if a child lacks background knowledge or vocabulary (for example, a multilingual learner), they still need to develop the word recognition skills that will support decoding.

However, language comprehension skills must also be developed simultaneously. Thus, students who are learning to read in English need to be taught the meanings of the words they are decoding.

This six-step explicit phonics lesson sequence, outlined on p. 175 of CORE’s Teaching Reading Sourcebook, will help all students improve their decoding skills and should take about 35 minutes to complete with either a whole group or a small group. Use it daily to help students build decoding and automatic word recognition skills. Skills build upon each other in a logical progression to support decoding (reading) and encoding (spelling). Thus, no step should be skipped in the daily whole group lesson during Tier 1 instruction. If a lesson needs to be shortened, less words can be practiced in steps 1, 3, and 6. Data will inform both where to begin instruction within your scope and sequence and the steps to focus on in small group, differentiated instruction.

Step One: Develop Phonemic Awareness (3 minutes)

The aim of this step is to help early readers understand that words are composed of smaller units of sound (phonemes). The focus for this part of the lesson should be the new sound that you will be blending, reading, and spelling that day, but can include previously taught sounds.

The first step is to practice blending and segmenting sounds as follows:

Blending Routine:

Teacher: Says the sounds in the word. /k/ /r/ /ē//k/. What’s the word?

Students: Say the word. (creek)

Teacher: Repeat with additional words.

Segmenting Routine:

Teacher: Orally says the word. (The word is “meet” What’s the word?)

Students: Echo the word. (meet)

Teacher: Segment or tap out sounds in the word.

Students: (/m//ē//t/)

Step Two: Introduce and Review Sound-Spelling Patterns (3 minutes)

In this step, students are explicitly introduced to sound-spelling patterns and have an opportunity to review sound-spelling patterns, also known as phoneme-grapheme associations, that have already been taught. This helps them develop their automatic association of letters to sounds, which is foundational for reading and writing. This is a teacher-led activity, as you will need to explicitly introduce concepts and listen for correct pronunciation.

Use sound-spelling cards to introduce new sound-spellings and use letter/sounds cards to review previously taught sound/spelling correspondences in the words. Practice with no more than 20 cards daily to avoid overwhelming students. When introducing a new sound/spelling correspondence, you may also teach/review/reinforce letter formation in this step.

Sound/Spelling Introduction Routine:

Teacher: Shows new sound-spelling card to students, says the name of the card and the corresponding sound-spelling pattern (ee – /ē/)

Students: Look at the card and echo what the teacher says (ee – /ē/)

Sound/Spelling Review Routine:

Teacher: Shows letter/spelling cards to students and prompts for a choral response.

Students: Look at the card say corresponding sound (m – /m/) , (ee -/ē/), (t – /t/), etc. for new sound-spelling pattern and those that have been previously taught.

Teacher: provide error correction when students make an error by referring students back to sound-spelling cards.

Step Three: Blend Words (6 minutes)

In this step, you’ll provide supported practice in sounding out words by blending the sounds in words that include the pattern introduced and previously taught sound-spelling patterns.. This helps students acquire the skill of reading unknown words independently and applying what they have learned about sound-spelling patterns.

While teaching blending, it’s essential to focus on the skill you’re developing and avoid it becoming a vocabulary lesson. If a student doesn’t understand a word, give a simple definition and then move on with blending. Aim to blend 12 to 15 words daily containing the week’s phonics skill and review skills.

Follow lesson models for blending on pages 209-228 of CORE’s Teaching Reading Sourcebook. Sound-by-sound and continuous blending provide the most scaffolding and support, while whole word and spelling-focused blending provides the least scaffolding and support.

Move between routines based on student needs, providing more support as you introduce new sounds and less scaffolding and support as students become more independent. When you hear an error, provide quick and positive error correction that supports students rereading the word and arriving at the correct pronunciation, instead of giving them the answer and moving on.

Example decodable word list:

Creek | must

Meet | street

Crisp | kite

Treat | flute

Fleet | edge

Moat | tree

Trick | float

Perch | cheek

Step Four: Build Automatic Word Recognition (3 minutes)

Automatic word recognition enables students to decode words quickly and effortlessly.

Use the words blended in step three to develop the quick and effortless reading of words. Use consistent signals to cue students to respond by chorally reading the words so that one or two students do not rush or dominate the activity.

You may also practice previously taught irregular words at this step.

Automatic Word Reading Routine:

Teacher: Points to the left of the first word and says, “Think.”

Students: Read the word silently in their heads.

Teacher: Waits two seconds and says, “Word” to signal students to say the word as they sweep their finger quickly under the word.

Students: Read the whole word aloud in unison.

Step Five: Apply to Decodable Text (10 minutes)

Decodable texts provide an opportunity for students to practice and apply newly acquired phonics skills and develop fluency. As students move through steps five and six, they become increasingly independent in their application of taught skills.

It’s important to remember that a text is only decodable if the students have been taught and have had ample practice with the sound/spelling correspondences included in the words and if the majority of irregular words have been previously taught.

At this step, you will present the decodable text from the lesson or write one or two sentences containing this week’s phonics focus, words with earlier learned phonics skills, and previously taught irregular words.

Apply to Decodable Text Routine:

More information about this routine can be found on pages 235-239 of the Teaching Reading Sourcebook .

First step: Students whisper-read the page (or sentences) to themselves.

Second step: Teacher and students choral read the page (or sentences) together.

Third step: After students have whisper-read and have chorally read each page in the book (or sentences), the teacher randomly calls on individual students to take a turn reading a sentence or two aloud while the rest of the class reads along by tracking the text with their finger. Reread the entire text in this manner. After this step, students will have read the text in various ways three times. It is then appropriate, and necessary, to have students respond to literal questions about the text. This teaches students that we read to gain meaning from the text. As part of their response, students should show which sentence or page supports their answer by physically touching the supporting text. This teaches an important comprehension skill of finding the answer in the text.

Fourth step: Students re-read text independently or in partners for fluency practice while the teacher circulates to listen to students read, giving prompts and error-corrections as needed.

Step Six: Word Work for Decoding and Encoding (10 minutes)

In this step, students practice the skills they built during steps one to five. Word work allows them to apply sound/spelling patterns by writing, building, manipulating, and sorting words. These activities should provide opportunities for students to both encode and decode words.

Dictation offers opportunities for encoding and provides a simple formative assessment to help guide instruction. You can also incorporate additional word work activities, such as word sorts or practice with spelling patterns, into small group or individual practice time.

It’s essential not to skip this step, so if you’re short of time, reduce the number of words blended in previous steps.

Dictation Routine: Sound Dictation:

Teacher: Dictates sound /ē/

Students: Echo sound /ē/

Teacher: “Write all the spellings you can think of to represent the /ē/ sound.”

Students: Write all the ways they know on a dry-erase board, in a notebook, or on paper. (e, e_e, ee, ea)

Teacher: “What spellings represent the /ē/ sound?”

Students: Respond either chorally or individually e, e_e, ee, and ea.

Teacher: Teacher writes the different spellings on the board or points the sound-spelling card on the wall that shows the long e spellings taught.

Students: Check that they wrote the correct letter(s) from the model.

Word Dictation:

Teacher: Dictates the word “The word is “meet”.  As in, meet me at eight. What is the word?”

Students: Echo the word “meet.”

Teacher: “Now, let’s count the sounds in the word ‘meet.’ Hold up a finger as you say each sound.”

Teacher and students: Say the sounds together, holding up a finger for each sound. “/m/ /ē/ /t/.”

Teacher: “How many fingers are we holding up?” (Three)

Teacher: “How many sounds in meet? (Three) “Yes, there are three sounds in meet.”

Teacher: “Think about the three sounds in ‘meet.’ Check the sound-spelling cards. Now write the word ‘meet,’ sound by sound, on your paper.” Give guidance for the spelling of /ē/ by referring back to the sound-spelling card.

Teacher: After students have had a chance to write, prints the word meet on the board and asks students to hold up their papers and compare their spelling with the word on the board.

Students: Check their work and correct the word if necessary.

Teacher: “Now, let’s say and spell the word together, meet . . . m-e-e-t.”

Similar to blending, there are different dictation routines that are more or less scaffolded. For more detail, see page 219 for Sound-by-Sound Dictation and p. 230 for Whole Word Dictation in the Teaching Reading Sourcebook .

Sentence Dictation:

Teacher: Dictates sentence, “I like green beans and peas.”

Students: Echo sentence, “I like green beans and peas.”

Teacher: Asks students to repeat the sentence again.

Students: Repeat the sentence.

Teacher: “How many words are in the sentence?”

Students: Repeat the sentence and count the words.

Students: Write the sentence on a dry-erase board, in a notebook, or on paper.

Teacher: Monitors students and repeats the sentence to students who ask, giving error corrections, as needed.

Teacher: “Read the sentence back to me.”

Students: Read the sentence back to the teacher.

Teacher: Writes the sentence on the board. Teacher quickly notes capitalization, punctuation, handwriting, spacing, spelling, etc.

Students: Check their work and correct words if necessary.

Download the Phonics Lesson Plan Template

Looking for a printable guided reading lesson plan to help your students build their reading comprehension skills? Click here to download our phonics lesson plan template for free.

Continue Your Professional Development with CORE Learning

Incorporating instructional materials and practices based on the Science of Reading can transform your literacy teaching and help all your students learn to decode and encode regardless of their ability, reading level, or background.

CORE Learning provides educators with the skills they need to deliver standards-aligned and evidence-based reading instruction to all learners through the Online Elementary Reading Academy .

Literacy Partnerships Manager

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Small Group Lesson Plan Template

Lesson plan templates are great tools for planning small group instruction. This ready-to-use small group lesson plan allows you to identify key skills and areas of focus, plan what lesson materials you’ll need and how you want to structure the lesson. Best of all, you can download and print this lesson plan template for free!

This free sample is from our Teacher Planner 2022-2023 - a customizable, editable planner for teachers, to help with all your planning and organization needs for the 2022-2023 school year. It includes must-have customizable tools for planning managing the school year, handy templates for lesson and unit planning, customizable calendar templates, and over 40 forms and templates.

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Teaching a Small Group Lesson

You’ve organized your small group supplies , pinpointed the skill you want to work on, and decided how to group your students. Now it’s time for teaching a small group lesson!

Planning a Small Group Lesson

Small groups are a personal, more intimate way to teach so start the planning process by considering the needs of each student in the group. 

Ask yourself these questions as you plan:

• Do I need to reteach something first?
• Is there a skill the children need BEFORE I teach this lesson?
• Will all groups be doing the same activity but on different levels?
• What book, game, or song might be a good introduction to the lesson?
• Do I have the materials I need for this lesson?

Warm-Up Activity

Once you’ve established your plan for the small group lesson, invite a group of children over to the teacher table. As teachers, we’re eager and want to jump quickly into the actual lesson, right? But you’ll better serve your students if you begin your small group time with a quick warm-up.

A good warm-up activity will help the students get engaged, excited, and focused.

Warm-ups can be familiar activities from a prior lesson. You can pretend it’s a game show with a quick round of questions to review what students have learned. Next, you could do a warm-up where the kids sort a bowl of pattern blocks by their shape. Finally, you can have them snip paper pieces for a patterning exercise. Use different hands-on activities for warm-ups to keep your students interested.

But warm-up activities don’t have to always be done at the teacher table. Have students get up and gather art supplies, math manipulatives, letter magnets, or poetry journals for your small group activity. Have the class search the room for hidden game cards they’ll be using today at the teacher table.

Remember, warm-ups should only take a couple of minutes. The purpose of the warm-up activity is to get everyone ready for the small group lesson.

Introduce Your Small Group Lesson

After the warm-up, you’re ready to introduce the lesson. Simply tell they children “Today we will learn” or “Today we will work on” and say the skill you are teaching. You might tell them “why” they are learning it, too. For example, “Today we will learn about the beginning sound of the letter P. Knowing letter sounds helps us learn how to read.”

Next, it’s your turn to teach, model, and demonstrate. Have props to help you teach the lesson and to make it memorable for the students. So, if you’re teaching the beginning sound of letter P, you might have a small toy animal pig, a paper plate, a pom pom, and a purple marker.

Teaching a small group lesson should only take several minutes. If you’re teaching longer than 5 minutes, try to be more specific about the purpose and narrow down the skill to cut the time.

Practice the Skill

The bulk of small group time should be spent with the children actively practicing the skill. Vary the activities in your small group lessons. Play seasonal alphabet games , practice counting , do matching tasks , illustrate poems , sort shapes and colors . A wide assortment of hands-on activities will help your students master skills much better than only using worksheets. 

Review What We Learned

Review what the group practiced and talk about what they learned. You might even model the skill again using the same demonstration and props you used to teach it. Ask questions for comprehension and invite students to show you what they learned. Encourage them to tell their families what they did at the teacher table.

Preview What's Next

In conclusion, as you end your small group lesson, you’ll want to give students a preview of what’s coming next.

You might say:

• We will work on this skill.
• Next time, we will practice this.
• Tomorrow, we will learn how to do this.

You might even want to share a quick peak of the next activity. The purpose of the preview is to keep kids excited about your small group lessons!

Successfully teaching a small group lesson is easy when you follow this planning process!

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A Streamlined System for Differentiated Learning–Guided Reading

[Looking for a small group Guided Reading structure that's easy to use AND accelerates students' achievement? You're in the right place!  Stay tuned to a free lesson plan and insights to help you Do Less. And Accomplish More!]

When I was a new teacher, I came home tired.  Dead tired.  My husband wanted to support me, to treat me, so he would offer to take me out to eat for dinner.  

He would innocently ask, “Where would you like to go?”

Then I would despair.

Yes, dear readers, the thought of even having to choose between one of 5 choices of restaurants in our small town Overwhelmed me. First world problem, yes.

But why did I react so strongly?

Decision fatigue.

An instructional day with a constant stream of choice after choice.

Choices about instruction.   (We had no curriculum! Have ya been there?)

Choices about student behavior.

Choices about grading.

Choices about copying.

To copy or not to copy, that was the question.

I feel for today’s teacher even more than I emphasize with my old teacher-self.  I didn’t have Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and Teachers Pay Teachers to contend with.

These platforms are dreamy in terms of possibilities.  They can also feel deathly when we have too many decisions to make.  Indeed, a recent study calculated that teachers have to choose among at least 205 trillion instructional options.

That, ah, could be, ah, considered challenging!

A Small Group, Guided Reading Structure to Combat Decision Fatigue

To combat decision fatigue, AND to help you accelerate all of your readers’, I propose a small group, guided reading structure that has served me well for nearly 20 years.  

I’ll then describe how one teacher might use this structure to plan lessons for 2 different groups. 

I’ve used this structure as a tutor with hundreds of children, ages as varied as 3 to 15. It’s also similar to the structure of an early intervention called the Targeted Reading Intervention I developed at the University of North Carolina that had significant impact on all reading measures (decoding, word identification, spelling, and comprehension) as reported in these studies: ( study 1 , study 2 , study 3 , & study 4 ).  

(This structure is generally fitting to any student at a K-3 reading level or any student of any age needing decoding, word identification, or fluency remediation.)

These are the 3 critical components of a strong, comprehensive small group guided reading session:

Re-Reading for Fluency is just like it sounds.  The students re-read a book or selection of text several times until they have expanded their knowledge of high-frequency words, quickened their reading rate, and gained confidence and motivation in their reading.  To help them succeed, the teacher models fluent reading while the students follow along. (We fade out this component when students are above grade level and fluent at about middle school reading levels.)

Word Work is the time for focusing on sound-based decoding and spelling for the end purpose of rapid acquisition of word identification. Here at Reading Simplified we recommend only a handful of activities that integrate multiple reading sub-skills simultaneously:

• Concept of the alphabetic principle (that our written language is a code for sounds),
• Left-to-right directionality,
• Phonemic awareness (perception of individual sounds in words, i.e., “much” = /m/  /u/  /ch/).
• Letter-sound knowledge (i.e, that “c” is usually /k/, “ow” is often /oa/, and “tch” is usually /ch/,
• Decoding strategies, such as Blending As You Read and Flex It,
• Spelling strategies, such as Say It the Way It Looks, and
• Multisyllable strategies, such as Blend As You Read by Chunk.

These reading sub-skills are integrated into just these handful of activities:

• Search for It

(For advanced readers, Word Work can also morph to emphasize vocabulary meanings and Greek and Latin roots.)

Guided Reading

Guided Reading is when the students take turns reading aloud a challenging text that builds their decoding and word identification skills.  The teacher offers word-level support and comprehension support where necessary. Finally, students conclude the small group session summarizing what they read and preparing to work independently with their targeted sound (such as /oa/) and texts for re-reading practice.

That’s it.  🙂

The mission of this small group structure is to move ALL students to rapid acquisition of independent reading.  Once kids can reading independently and enjoy reading for its own sake, then other structures may be beneficial, such as literature circles, genre study, book clubs, research studies, etc. But that’s a post for another day.  Most K-3 students, as well as struggling students, however, would benefit from the above structure to efficiently advance their reading skills and enjoyment.

Thus, a teacher using this structure doesn’t have to decide what to do at the beginning, middle, and end of every 20 minute interaction with every group.

Sigh of relaxation.

Instead, she has a framework that hits the most important tasks of early literacy and adapts them to each group’s particular needs.

How One Teacher Plans Her Small Group Lessons–Group 1

Imagine a teacher. We’ll call her Ms. Peregrine.  Ms. Peregrine teaches 1st grade and has 5 groups of students for her small group guided reading time.  She sees 2 of these groups every day; two of these groups every other day; and the final group 1-2 times per week.

She begins making notes in her small group planner for Group #1, AKA the “gymnasts.”  Based on her initial assessments of their reading achievement, they are at the Kindergarten reading level.  She has placed them at the earliest CVC step and have just been exposed to short a and short i.  

They have good comprehension of text read aloud to them.  Her main objective is to rapidly provide them the foundation of strong decoding skills so they can learn to recognize words easily, become fluent, and learn to love to read independently.

So, on the Reading Simplified Streamlined Pathway for Kindergarten level readers, this puts them at the first CVC level.

Background:  The Reading Simplified Streamlined Pathway is a kind-of scope and sequence for teaching anyone who is a young reader or a reader who is struggling. The Streamlined Pathway incorporates:

• Phonemic awareness,
• Letter-sound knowledge,
• Decoding strategies,
• High-frequency word knowledge, and

Using the Streamlined Pathway, coupled with the simple structure I’m presenting today for small group guided reading, a teacher can diagnose and plan small group and independent work more easily and with less effort.

Despite this time savings, she can also expect to see students reading achievement outcomes accelerate!

How 'bout them apples!

So as Ms. Peregrine begins thinking about her lesson, she’s already grounded by the 1st CVC level–the letter-sounds, Fry high frequency words, and decoding strategies that are emphasized there. Specifically, over the course of 1-2 weeks, she will focus on these:

• Short vowels      a    i   
• Consonants      c m p t s n h d w
• Consonant digraphs     th ch wh ll tt

Then she moves on to the specifics of her lesson:

Re-Reading for Fluency with Group 1

Quick decision.

Word Work with Group 1

Second, Word Work?

A little more time to think.

Yesterday Ms. Peregrine observed that everyone was much more reliable with their knowledge of the short a sound but they were still only 50-50 with the short i sound.  And, phoneme manipulation (practiced in activity Switch It ) with 3-sound words was still mostly a struggle.

So, she opts for “ Switch It ” first and chooses a word list that targets short a and short i (the only short vowel spellings they’ve been exposed to.)  But they can usually phonemically segment 3-sound words already and know essentially all consonants, so she can skip Build It from now on.

She also noted yesterday that Frank had advanced in his 3-sound word blending, but he still wasn’t independent without her coaching.  The rest of the students still needed her support about 1 time during the lesson.  So, Blend As You Read with CVC words should still be a goal for this group.

Thus, using the Streamlined Pathway to guide her, she writes in Read It words: has will with this.

She won’t take the time for Write It yet either since getting them to be confident with Blend As You Read is uppermost in importance.  (Also, a typical lesson with students like the gymnasts usually only includes 2 Word Work activities so sufficient time is left for Guided Reading.)

Guided Reading with Group 1

Now she’s ready with a great plan for her most struggling group of readers.

Less than 5 minutes of effort to plan and…

Sigh of pleasure.

How One Teacher Plans Her Small Group Lessons–Group 2

Now our brave heroine is ready to plan for her other daily group, the Swimmers.  This group tested at the early 1st grade level, so Ms. Peregrine has placed them at the second step of the 1st grade Streamlined Pathway.

• These students are familiar, but rusty, with their short vowels, and
• Their Blend As You Read strategy is developing well with CVC words.  
• They know several high frequency words, too, but not all that would be expected for her school for early 1st grade.  
• Comprehension of text read aloud to them is good.

(All students are sorted into 1 of 3 Streamlined Pathways: K, 1st Grade, or 2nd Grade and Up.  Yes, I’ve even taught struggling high school students and an adult who was functionally illiterate with a pathway like the 2nd Grade and Up one. By just having 3 Pathways to choose from, Ms. Peregrine minimizes The Overwhelm.  These 1-pagers are a lot simpler than endless standards, basal scope and sequences, district guidelines, etc., that she used to stress over.  And, yet, students learning to read quickly will be more likely to happen with this approach.  

Given that Ms. Peregrine selected Level 2 on the Streamlined Pathway, she knows she’s focusing on:

• The long o sound and its various main spellings, o o_e ow oa oe, as well as 
• High frequency words from Fry’s top 100 list that target the long o sound go more so no

Re-Reading for Fluency with Group 2

Like with the gymnasts group, Ms. Peregrine easily chooses the Re-Reading for Fluency text from yesterday’s Guided Reading selection, “Joe and Joan” from the Reading Simplified Academy.  

The swimmers just began Advanced Phonics instruction, specifically with the long o sound and its major spellings.  They read “Joe and Joan” yesterday with her support and then she read it to them twice as they followed along.  They also read it as partners during literacy stations.  So, they should be pretty fluent at this short story by now.  

Word Work for Group 2

Next up, what will she do for Word Work?

At the Advanced Phonics level, her decisions are pretty easy for planning Word Work.  She aims to practice the long o sound all week, during Guided Reading as well as literacy stations, and for homework reading.  Since they just got started learning the Sort It activity , it’s good to reinforce it with a new list of words.

• Learning the various spellings of the long o sound: o o_e ow oa oe,
• Reinforcing their Blend As You Read approach to decoding,
• Practicing their phonemic awareness (especially phonemic segmentation) as they Say Each Sound As They Write Each Sound.

In addition, Ms. Peregrine is still concerned about their inconsistencies with their short vowel knowledge and their phonemic manipulation.  They are pretty successful at the CVC level but she wants to challenge them with CVCC words.  

lamp lump limp lip lisp lip lop lot lost list last past pest pet pelt

Example of Switch It with different word list:

Guided Reading for Group 2

She’ll send her swimmers group off to the computers to practice re-reading “Soap Boat” on their own. They’ll enjoy it and find re-reading easy.

Just like with Group 1, the gymnasts, Ms. Peregrine has again swiftly planned for another small group guided reading session.

Prepped and ready.

Now she has time to watch This Is Us !

Would you like to simplify your guided reading instruction, too?

Imagine if you were to plan like this.  What might be the biggest benefit to you or your students? Please comment below so we can continue the conversation!

29 thoughts on “ A Streamlined System for Differentiated Learning–Guided Reading ”

How do I do guided reading with J.k. Students who don’t know the names of the letters or their sounds?

Rachel, a great question! I do 2 Word Work activities with these types of students:

1) Build It and 2) Read It

I also Buddy Read simple, mostly decodable texts. In other words if they just began learning the sounds for “m,” “a,” “t,” “s,” and “p,” I would let them read words with those sounds such as “map,” “mat,” “sat,” etc., in every sentence we encountered. But the rest of the sentence I would read to them, encouraging them to read along.

The biggest trick with the newbies is to dive right into teaching them letter-sounds and phonemic awareness and decoding all at once, in the context of words, with the 2 activities above. Good luck!

Could you suggest how to use these techniques in a rotation sequence? I teach a combined 1st and 2nd grade class so I need to be able to work with one group while others are doing independent practice. Much of the build it, switch it style activities require a teacher, so I can not do those as I also meet with a reading group. Any suggestions for independent work for 1st or 2nd while I meet with the other grade to work on either the reading group or the build it, switch it style activities?

Great question, Courtney! I’m going to be writing about this very soon.

In the meantime, here are a couple of the centers/stations I recommend that relate to Build It / Switch It / Read It :

Word Work games –picture word building. Students find a picture and build the word themselves using letter-sound cards. The back of the card could have the “answer” for self-correcting. –Picture word match. Same as above except students match the picture with a word on a card –Charades. Draw a card; read it; act it out; see if your team can guess what it is (Choose action words like run, swim, jump, sit, etc.) –Build a chain. Cut slips of papers for building a word chain. Have a scrambled list of words that could make a chain of 1 switch per word. Let students Write and Say each word as they write it on the paper slip. Then they put them in order and make a paper chain.

Apps/Computer games — starfall.com — Teach Your Monster to Read — Montessori Crosswords app (target key vowel sound group is working on) –Ready Set Read by Lupine Learning (this one actually has a version of Switch It, with 2 different phonemic difficulty levels)

For Independent centers/stations, choose word difficulties slightly below where you work with them for guided reading. For instance, if they can Switch It with CVCC words but not CCVCC with you, then the center should probably mostly be CVC level words.

I would have these centers be constant in the classroom. Each group would choose different level of words or levels on the apps, depending on where they were along the Streamlined Pathway. Hope this helps, Courtney!!

I’ll have more energy to help teach & guide my students while ensuring I am covering the essential activities to accelerate their reading!

Love it, Joanne!! 🙂

I have a group of intensive and a group of strategic third grade students that are on level G and K. I would like to bring their reading levels up to M/N what can I do?

Barbara, I’m sorry to hear about these challenges but glad you’re here for a solution! I know with the Reading Simplified system, you can do it.

I suggest our classic lesson plan format:

Re-Reading for Fluency Word Work Switch It using CCVCC+ words Read It, initially to learn Blend As You Read Sort It, one new sound a week Guided Oral Reading, using texts that target that week’s sound

Please ask more specifics inside the Teachers’ Lounge and we can coach you through day by day…

Oh my goodness! As a special ed. teacher, I cannot even imagine how much time and stress your academy could save for me! I teach 3rd and 4th Grade students, but their reading/spelling/writing levels vary from preprimer to 4th Grade. I have a huge caseload this year and feel like I am drowning! ? I have kids coming and going from different classrooms and specialists, so I rarely have the same groups of kids.

Julie, that IS an impossible job with traditional methods. 🙁 I DO believe we could help streamline your instruction and give a clearer vision for where everyone can be.

We’re hosting a special challenge this week and will open up the Reading Simplified Academy to all at the end of that challenge. If you’re not already signed up for the challenge, join here: ReadingSimplified.com/level-up If you aren’t doing the challenge, keep an eye out for an email from us on Fri. (if you’ve gotten any gift in email from us you’re on our list).

I am not really that surprised that decoding texts are more beneficial than repetitive texts! That makes so much sense.

How long would you spend with each group? I only have about 60 minutes for all literacy instruction but would love to follow something like this!

Ginny, it really depends on how much time you have. I’d like to get 20 min. at least for my most in-need group. Some groups could get by with 15 min. some of the time. The main principle to remember is how to optimize the time with students reading text with your support. Some groups may meet with you daily, some every other day, and some every third day, if that helps get the practice into the laps of those who need it most.

I’m looking for suggestions for what my students should be doing during about 40 minutes of non-teacher time for centers. In addition, we are trying to keep the non-teacher time down to 20 minutes in grade 1. Ideas?

Hi Becky! Check out these articles about Literacy Centers:

https://readingsimplified.com/differentiating-literacy-centers-wk-1/ https://readingsimplified.com/differentiating-literacy-centers-wk-2/ https://readingsimplified.com/differentiating-literacy-centers-wk-3/

Loved this and any suggestions at a Kindergarten Level how to set up a weekly schedule for 15-20 group. Ex: 10 minute book read, 5 min switch it, 5 min read it.? I am still learning about write it and sort it and not sure if all these should be switched during the week?

Megan, I’m so glad this sounds like a doable plan for you! We have more training about implementing small group instruction and literacy centers in the Differentiate It and Extend It units of the Main Course. We also have an Advanced Workshop about starting differentiated literacy centers in 3 weeks.

I’m not sure I get your question, though. In a typical Reading Simplified lesson, we choose 2 to 3 Word Work activities. So we might rotate among the various options that are relevant for a student at his given developmental level. However, we almost always include Switch It.

I’m working with a small group of kindergarteners who like to memorize instead of read. Would switch it be a good activity to use with them?

Yes! Switch It will help them build better sound-based decoding–learning how to match sounds and symbols. Also, we recommend Read It as well to support your students to decode words in their first stage of learning. Here’s more on that.

By following your lesson planning template, I will save myself a lot of time, energy, and stress. My students will benefit directly because instead of so much winging it and being slightly scattered and inconsistent during my small group time, every minute will be intentional and effective.

So glad to hear of your successes, Maria!

Love this time-saving prep model. Easy to change skills according to the needs of the children. Having the stream-lined pathway right in front of me will help remind me of the most important skill to emphasize with different groups at different levels.

I completed your Academy program and love the resources. I currently have a grade 2 student who went through the grade 1 program. We completed that, but I am not sure where to go from here. Should I restart at grade 2 level? It is mostly the same resources, but I don’t think she is ready for the level of texts in the grade 2 program, nor the MS materials. Not sure how to proceed. I would appreciate any ideas you have.

Assessment data would be good now to determine next steps. What phonics spellings has she not learned yet? If there are a few of one sound (or more), then reviewing those could be smart. Typically, we begin Read It and Write It with Multisyllable Words when we start the /er/ sound. Was that too much of a struggle? We would have expected MS words to be doable at this point, at least easier ones.

We also move towards more and more Read It and Write It with MS words when the child is still not fluent but we’ve finished the Pathway. And/Or, fluency becomes more of the Most Pressing Need. It just really depends on what skills she has and which she lacks. A back-and-forth conversation inside the Teachers’ Lounge with our Reading Simplified experts would be a good help now.

Our district is moving to a four-day week next year. I’m slightly terrified. However, it should give me about an hour each day to do groups. I should also have a para in my room during group time. I like the simplified planning and think it will help with planning group instruction. I appreciate the concept of not working with every group every day. I’ve generally rotated the groups through each activity. Do you think it is better to alternate teacher and para with the daily groups? For example: Teacher with Group 1 on Monday and Wednesday and Para with Group 2. Then, Teacher with Group 2 on Tuesday and Thursday and Para with Group 1. Also, is a group of six workable?

I’m so excited to see what reading growth you can see with this model Lesa!

I would use the TA for teaching during centers and holding kids accountable during centers. But work with each small group myself. We suggest a mixed pattern of rotations such that the lowest reading group is served every day; some are served every other day; and the high flyers are served every 3 days or less. For those you meet with less frequently as a group, have a checklist each week to note when you’ve checked in with each reader to ask at least a summary question of what they’ve been reading. We teach our rotation and small group system in the Differentiate It and Extend It units of the Main Course of the Reading Simplified Academy.

We also have an advanced workshop called, Launching Differentiated Literacy Centers.

A group of 6 is very hard unless the students are readers already. For struggling readers, we suggest groups of 3 to 4.

Does Reading Simplified have assessments or check points to gauge where to start in the program and when to move to the next set of set of activities or level? I am thinking of switching from Reading Reflex with my second grade homeschooler because she needs help with fluency.

Hi Marcie, great question! Yes, we have an informal Snapshot Assessment that includes basic code knowledge, phonemic segmentation, and nonsense word reading (which helps identify blending skill, too). We also suggest the San Diego Quick Assessment for word ID. The San Diego is a quick proxy for reading level. Inside our advanced workshops, we have one about how to tutor and we discuss other norm-referenced assessments that one could buy, as well as informal reading inventories to get a reading passage test.

I found this very helpful, as I struggle a bit with knowing what to choose when planning lessons.

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Get the Ticket to Making Phonics Stick!

Organized instruction yields organized young minds..

5 Benefits of Small Group Instruction w/ Lesson Plan Examples

Julia Francis : Aug 17, 2022 11:00:00 AM

“Instead of focusing on the relationship between class size and student attainment, we should be looking at the relationship between class size and effective teaching.” -Peter Blatchford

With an ongoing teacher shortage in the United States, it’s no wonder that class sizes are a topic of discussion. When teachers are responsible for a large number of students in the classroom, the quality and effectiveness of teaching can suffer because teachers don’t have time to provide the individual support that students need.

One way that teachers can mitigate large class sizes is to focus on small group instruction where it makes sense. At Alludo, we know that small classes can improve learning, which is why we’ve included courses and microlearning activities about small group instruction in our professional development catalog that districts and schools can utilize in their unique training programs.

Here are five benefits of small group instruction with lesson plan examples for you to consider.

Table of Contents

What is small group instruction.

• Give Teachers Time to Look and Listen

Increases Collaboration Between Teachers and Students

Empowers students and gives them a choice to drive lessons.

• Increased Collaboration Among Students
• It Provides Individualized Instruction on a Smaller Scale
• It Increases Student Engagement
• It Increases Opportunities for Personalized Feedback
• It Boosts Student Confidence
• When is it Appropriate to Use Small Group Discussion?
• Alludo's Take

Equip Teachers in Your District to Boost Student Engagement with Small Group Instruction

Teachers know that students don’t always grasp new information at the same pace or in the same way. Presenting to the entire class is a necessary part of teaching but may leave some students struggling to catch up. That’s where small group instruction comes in.

Small group instruction has these characteristics:

• Groups of 2-6 students . Students are grouped together based on their progress and needs, so the teacher can cover material where extra help is needed.
• Takes place after whole group instruction . The most efficient way to incorporate small group instruction into the classroom is to present to the entire class. During the presentation, the teacher can observe and assess students’ understanding of the material, then break them down into small groups.
• Focused on the needs of the students . In working with each group, the teacher should focus on the needs of the students in the group, providing them with explanations and guidance to help them grasp the material.
• Flexible and differentiated instruction . Each small group session should be flexible, with opportunities for the teacher to differentiate instruction and provide for each student’s needs to help them improve their skills and increase their knowledge.

The goal of small group instruction is to allow for differences in the way students learn and the pace at which they learn. Since no two students are alike, small group instruction allows the teacher to connect with students on an individual level. During small group sessions, the rest of the class should be working on an assignment.

Small group work plans may include activities such as these:

• Guided reading : Students work in small groups based on their reading levels at a particular point in time. Their teacher chooses a text for each group based on their respective level, and the students take turns reading aloud or independently. Once students have read the entire text, their teacher can provide group and individual support.
• Think, pair, share : Two students partner to ask each other questions about the assigned material. The students first think about the problem or question independently. Then, they share their thoughts and questions with their partner. The teacher can then expand the discussion to include the whole class, maximizing student participation and engagement.
• Chat stations : Students pair up and walk around the classroom to different stations related to the material being studied. At each chat station, they stop to perform a task or answer questions. This cooperative learning strategy works well for reviewing quizzes or tests, introducing new material, or analyzing class readings. By engaging less talkative students in a less intimidating setting, it prepares them to explore the material in a full-classroom discussion later on.

These are just a few lesson plan examples for you to consider. The possibilities are endless and the key is to group students in such a way that they can improve their learning regardless of the activity.

Is Small Group Instruction Better for Learning?

Does small group instruction help teachers do a better job of teaching and make it easier for students to learn? There are several ways that small group instruction is superior to whole class instruction when it comes to student learning.

Gives Teachers Time to Look and Listen

Small group instruction gives teachers time to observe students and listen to what they have to say in a way that whole class instruction does not. Conversation can occur more naturally in a group of two to six students than it can in a classroom of 30 students.

In a small group, teachers have the opportunity to observe how students work and listen to their feedback. Both elements can improve student learning.

Small group instruction allows teachers to collaborate with students. Collaboration may involve allowing students to set the direction for how to approach an assignment. Giving students a choice in the methods used in instruction can help teachers understand what they need and want.

Teachers can, of course, offer suggestions and guidance, but the goal should be to learn as much as possible about how students learn.

Students can do a lot to help each other and that’s another way that small group learning can be superior to whole class instruction. Teachers can offer students the opportunity to explain concepts and ideas to one another.

Teachers are sometimes amazed at how well students can teach one another and small group instruction can be instructive for everybody, including teachers.

What Are the 5 Benefits of Small Group Instruction?

Small group instruction benefits teachers, but its biggest benefits accrue to students. Here are five that illustrate how useful small group instruction can be.

#1: Increased Collaboration Among Students

In our Teacher Happiness Report, we surveyed teachers in districts about their satisfaction. High workloads and low compensation were two of the key factors, with relevant PD coming in a close third.

#2: It Provides Individualized Instruction on a Smaller Scale

With small group instruction, teachers have the opportunity to provide individualized instruction on a smaller and more direct scale than they can when teaching an entire class. 

Students may be grouped homogeneously (putting students at the same level together) or heterogeneously (grouping students at different levels) and either way, teachers can spend one-on-one time to help students progress.

#3: It Increases Student Engagement

It may be all too easy for some students to disengage during whole class instruction. With limited opportunities to ask questions or share their thoughts, they may feel intimidated and allow their minds and attention to wander.

In small groups, students can have a say in how they learn and may feel more empowered to let the teacher know when they don’t understand something or have an idea to share with the group.

#4: It Increases Opportunities for Personalized Feedback

Teachers may find it difficult to provide personalized feedback in some situations. Small groups make it easy for teachers to give students the one-on-one attention they need, to observe their learning in action, and to provide constructive feedback.

Students take personalized feedback and use it during whole class instruction and when doing homework, so the result is improved student outcomes.

#5: It Boosts Student Confidence

Finally, small group instruction helps students gain confidence. For example, when teachers allow students to drive lessons by choosing how to learn or even by teaching one another, students become aware of their abilities and grow in self-esteem.

Students who participate in small group instruction are more likely to feel confident when participating in whole class discussions as well as in small groups.

When Is it Appropriate to Use Small Group Discussion?

There’s no question that small group instruction can be beneficial to students and teachers, but when is it appropriate to implement it in the classroom?

Small groups are most effective when students have had the opportunity to get to know the teacher and one another, so for that reason, we suggest waiting until after the first six weeks of school to begin. Waiting also provides teachers with the time they need to assess students’ progress and determine the best way to group them.

In most cases, students will benefit from meeting in small groups three to five times a week. The implementation of small group sessions should include a pre-assessment period for the teacher, direct instruction with groups, and post-assessment time for the teacher.

Alludo’s Take

The Alludo platform can include access to our curated catalog of professional development content , that contains pedagogic strategies to support small group instruction. For example, our Small Group Instruction mission includes seven microlearning activities to help teachers learn about small group strategies and how to implement them in their classrooms.

Providing teachers with the information they need about small group instruction empowers them to incorporate small groups into their lesson plans and reap the benefits in the classroom for themselves and their students.

We use gamified learning to encourage teacher engagement and make it easy for teachers to complete their personal development requirements and electives on their own schedule. When teachers have a voice and a choice, they will pass their enthusiasm and empowerment on to their students.

Students who learn in small groups are engaged in what they learn, empowered to ask questions and help one another, and have the opportunity to grasp material at a pace that works for them. Small group learning allows students and teachers to learn from one another.

Want to reach up to 100% PD in your district? See how Alludo can help make it happen with our free professional development platform trial, including:

• Hundreds of core topics
• Asynchronous microlearning activities
• Timely and specific feedback
• Analytics that show learning impact
• Access anytime, anywhere

What's New in the Alludo Catalog ?

“It would take us years to roll out all the PD that we can on Alludo." - Kathy Jackson, Director of Teaching and Learning for K-12, YCJUSD

Analytic vs. Holistic Rubrics: Which Type of Rubric Should You Use?

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The Art of Rubric Design: Crafting Effective Assessment Tools

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Darling Ideas

…with Stephanie Darling

Small Group Lesson Plans

Small group lesson plans do not have to take forever, but so often they do.

Four to six groups, meeting five days a week… that is as many as 30 different lessons a week.  Plus, these small group lesson plans must contain multisensory activities, phonemic awareness practice, address phonics skills, include decodable text, heart word practice, and dictation/writing practice.  However, they can only take 15-20 minutes because you have more than one group! Not to mention, you are new to SOR— or have been doing it for a bit, but still, feel overwhelmed about the needs of your small groups.

And that is just for a small part of the day.  Arguably one of the most important parts, for sure, but still.  I think as teachers, we all hold fast to the saying anything worth doing is worth doing well.  To “do” those small group lessons well, it takes time.  In fact,  it was not long ago that I felt like I was spending my entire weekend planning my small groups and intervention lessons.  And, I already had my hands on some great decodable readers and passages!  Furthermore, when those small group lesson plans were completed, it was time to prep for all the other lessons of the week.  SAME.

Do you feel me?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Small groups are probably my absolute favorite part of the day!  Working with those angel babies on specific skills that they need to practice is so much fun!  I love seeing the learning happening right before my eyes, watching a kid learn to read!  These are the things that dreams are made of.  With that said, I wanted this year to be different in terms of the time it took me to get ready for all of those magical moments.  I wanted to do something over the summer to help minimize the time it took to prep for my small group lessons.  So, drum roll, please!

Da, da, da dum!

I created small group kits with an editable small group lesson plan template!  Yes!  So now, to plan your small groups, with data to see which phonics skill your students are needed practice with, just grab the decodable text that goes with that skill, and I also grab the small group kit as well.  That’s it!  ( Curious where I grab from?  Click here to see how I organize my small group lesson materials). No more spending all weekend on plans and getting ready for groups.  Sure I sometimes have to print a kit or a bit, but for the most part, the heavy lifting is done for me, and you too!

Click here to go straight to ALL my small group kits on TPT!

*Let me throw a disclaimer or word of caution if you will in here. Your small group time can be one of the most valuable times for your students.   It’s a time when you can give your students exactly what they need.  These small group kits will hopefully put everything at your fingertips to meet those needs.  But you may need to adjust here and there for your students.  That is why the lesson plans per the Google Slides link are editable.   There is more in each small group lesson plan kit than what can be used in the typical time allotted for small group instruction.

So, What Do These Kits Have, exactly?

I am glad you asked  they have:.

🌟 Editable Lesson Plans

🌟 Phonemic Awareness Activities

🌟 Phonics Activities

🌟 Fluency Warm-Up Activities

🌟 Heart Word Practice

🌟 Comprehension Questions

🌟 Assessments and wrap-up activities

If you want to learn more about any of the small group components, click the topics in the list above to be taken to a blog post with all the details!

These posts will help you understand each component, and plan your lessons accordingly  i would love to help you diy it, if you want to skip that step and try one of these small group lesson plan kits, for free, click here, or if you want to check out the whole kit and kaboodle, click here to see all my small group kits (and decodable texts to match).  , need help organizing your students into small groups  check out my free quick start guide here.

Stephanie Darling

Related posts, how to teach phonics to students on different levels, blending interventions, 10 must-have gems for a science of reading classroom.

This looks great for small groups or 1:1

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Stellar Teaching Co.

Engaging Resources for Teaching Literacy

Making Connections Small Group Lessons and Passages

Do you ever struggle to find resources to help you teach your students how to make meaningful connections while they read?  With these 5 ready-to-print small group lesson plans, you will have everything you need to teach your lessons on Making Connections!  Each lesson set includes everything you need for an effective small group reading lesson. You’ll get scripted teacher lesson plans, student reading passages, a strategy card (aka mini-anchor chart) for your lesson objective, and a response sheet with a graphic organizer and comprehension questions connected to the focus for your lessons on making connections.

Filed Under: 4th , 5th , Anchor Charts and Posters , Homeschooler , Lesson Plans , Literacy Center Ideas , Printables , Reading , Reading Passages , Small Group Lessons , Text Structure , Under $5 , Worksheets

More about this resource

*This resource is included in the Stellar Literacy Collective. Click here to learn more*

Do you ever struggle to find resources to help you teach your students how to make meaningful connections while they read?  With these 5 ready-to-print small group lesson plans, you will have everything you need to teach your lessons on making connections! Each lesson set includes everything you need for an effective small group reading lesson. You’ll get scripted teacher lesson plans, student reading passages, a strategy card (aka mini-anchor chart) for your lesson objective, and a response sheet with a graphic organizer and comprehension questions connected to the focus for your lessons on making connections.

These strategy lessons work great for your small group instruction , but you could also use them for the whole group lessons you plan on teaching during your lessons on making connections. From helping students learn the different types of connections to helping them make deep and meaningful connections… These lessons will help your students become more confident in their ability to make relevant connections to what they read.

This set of lesson plans makes teaching this important reading strategy super simple. All the planning and prep work has been done for you. All you have to do is print and teach! Think about all the time you’ll save not having to hunt for reading passages or come up with comprehension questions related to your lesson. Each small group lesson includes everything you need.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ This resource is included in the Stellar Teacher Reading Membership. If you are a current member, you can find it in our resource library. If you aren’t a current member, you can learn more here .

HERE’S WHAT YOU GET:

• 5 Scripted out teacher lesson plans (perfect for small group instruction)
• 5 Passages to use with each lesson
• 5 Response pages (includes graphic organizer and response questions)
• 5 Strategy Cards (mini-anchor charts)
• Digital Version
• Teacher Guide

Check out the preview to learn more about this resource.

LET’S BREAK DOWN EACH LESSON ELEMENT:

• Scripted Teacher Lesson Plan  – The small group lesson plans provide you with the exact language you need to say to make sure your students are mastering the objective for the lesson. It also provides you with a really easy-to-implement lesson framework that works great for small group lessons.
• Strategy Card  – Each lesson also comes with a strategy card (like a mini anchor chart). This strategy card works great as a visual support during your lesson and students can take it with them at the end of the lesson.
• Student Passage  – Each passage is short (less than one full page) so it can quickly be read during a small group lesson.  It is also written in a way that makes it really easy for the students to practice and apply the focus skill. You won’t have to worry if the text you give your students will work for the lesson objective.
• Response Page  – If you want to extend your lesson or give your students an extension assignment, you can give them the response page which includes a graphic organizer focused on the lesson objective and three comprehension questions.
• Digital Version  – There is also a digital version created using Google Slides so this resource will work during both face-to-face and virtual instruction.
• Answer Key  – An answer key with possible answers is included for all passages.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Here is a list of all the objectives/focus skills for each lesson.

• Lesson #1 – Making Different Types of Connections
• Lesson #2 – Making Deep Connections vs. Surface Connections
• Lesson #3 – Using Prior Knowledge to Make Connections
• Lesson #4 – Using Connections to Make Predictions
• Lesson #5 – Sharing our Connections

You’ll love getting everything you need to teach a small group lesson on the reading strategy making connections.  Just think of all the hours you’ll save not having to type out your lesson plans, hunt for a passage that matches your lesson objective, and then come up with response questions/activities for your students to do after the lesson.

HERE’S HOW YOU CAN USE THIS RESOURCE IN YOUR CLASSROOM:

• Use these lessons during small group instruction to reinforce the importance of making connections.
• Use as part of your guided reading lessons and spread out the reading and writing over multiple days.
• Use as part of test prep to help your students get ready for their end-of-year test.
• Use passages during the intervention to help support students who struggle with making connections to the text.
• Use as part of your whole group lessons on making connections.
• Leave as part of your sub-plans – the scripted lesson plans make these resources really easy to follow.

LOVED BY BOTH TEACHERS AND STUDENTS: 

→ Your students will love the reading passages included in this set focused on making connections. The passages are high interest and will hold your student’s attention during the entire small group lesson.

→ You’ll love how quick and easy it is to prep your small group lessons. All you have to do is print the materials for the lesson you want to teach and you’re all set to teach. No more searching for reading passages or guided reading books or trying to find a passage that matches the skill you want to teach.

→Your students will love the “bite-sized” objective for each lesson. They won’t feel overwhelmed by what you are trying to teach them. They will feel confident in their ability to practice the one focus skill for each lesson.

→ You’ll love how easy the lesson structure is to follow. Each lesson follows the 4T model (clearly explained in the preview and lesson set). You can be confident that you will be using your small group time in a way that will actually move your students towards reaching their reading goals.

**Resource is also in The Stellar Literacy Collective **

I THINK YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:

→  Root Word of the Week Routine

→ Prefix & Suffix of the Week Routin e

→  Context Clue of the Week Routine for 4th Grade

____________________________________________________

Copyright © The Stellar Teacher Co. LLC www.stellarteacher.com Permission to copy for single classroom use only. Please purchase additional licenses if you intend to share this product.

We’d love to see this resource in action! Tag us on Instagram @thestellarteachercompany .

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Small Group Activities for Preschool

Small groups are an important part of a high-quality early childhood education. But what are small groups? How many should you have? And what should you teach in your small groups? These are all good questions when it comes to planning for effective small group activities in your preschool, pre-k, or kindergarten classroom.

What Are Small Groups?

Small groups are a highly-effective instructional method that allows you to target your instruction to meet the needs and skills of each student in your classroom.

Why Small Groups Are Important

Small group activities allow you to easily differentiate instruction for your students. The benefits of daily small group instruction are much greater than those of whole group instruction. When you incorporate small group activities into your daily schedule, you’ll be able to help your preschool, pre-k, and kindergarten students learn more.

Scaffolding is another important aspect of small group instruction. When you provide specific support to help a child move to the next level of learning, this is commonly referred to as scaffolding instruction. To successfully scaffold for a child, the teacher must understand the learning continuum for each specific skill and know where each child is on that continuum.

How Many Kids in Each Small Group?

Ideally, small groups can include three to six children per group. You can divide the students in your preschool classroom into several small groups, with three to six children per group.

How Many Small Groups Should You Have?

The number of groups you have will depend on how many children are in your classroom. For example, if you have a class of 20 Pre-K students, you may have four groups of five students each, or two groups of four, and two groups of six. It’s not important how many groups you have, but rather how you’ve determined which students are in each group.

Small Group Activities

How to Group Your Students

Creating small groups is not a guessing game. A high-quality early childhood program uses assessment data to create small groups. Assessment is a tool that highly-effective teachers use to help their students get from educational point A to point B. Teaching without following assessment data is like driving a bus full of young children blindfolded.

The most efficient assessment tools will take the data you collect and create small groups for you to eliminate any implicit biases you may have. My favorite assessment tool is ESGI – and it’s super quick and easy too!

How to Set Up Small Groups

First, you’ll want to designate a place in your classroom that is specifically for small group time so your students will know where to go when it’s their turn. I try to locate my small group area away from the nosiest areas of the classroom, like blocks and dramatic play. You can use a table for your small groups, or a carpet on the floor if you prefer.

Next, you’ll need an area for your small group materials. You can prep your small group materials each Friday for the following week so they’ll be ready to go when you walk in on Monday morning. Color coded bins or baskets, a different color for each day of the week work well for storing small group materials. You could also use colorful plastic drawers for organizing your small group items.

When to Have Small Groups

Small groups are most effective when you have them daily. Find a place in your daily schedule for small group instruction. You don’t have to meet with every group every single day, just have a designated time each day when you meet with at least one or two groups.

How to Manage Small Groups

When it comes to managing small groups, there are a few important pitfalls you should try to avoid.

Pitfall #1 : While it may be tempting to split your class in half and do one small group yourself, and have another adult (assistant or co-teacher) lead the other, it doesn’t align with the purpose for small groups. One of the purposes for small groups is help children learn how to work independently.

Pitfall #2 : It’s easy to create your groups based on behaviors and personalities and keep them that way all year, but this approach is contrary to small group best practices. Instead, your groups should be flexible and change when necessary based on where your students are on their own individual learning continuum. We know that all young children learn at their own pace, therefore it only makes sense that not all children will travel along the same learning path at the same time. This is why we assess students more than one time during the school year, to see the progress they’ve made, and to determine what they are ready for next.

Pitfall #3: Having small groups during center time. If you try to have your small group lessons during your center time you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle. The lure of the blocks and dramatic play center are going to be too strong and your small groups won’t be successful if they’re in competition with the other centers. Instead, have more than one center time in your daily schedule if possible, one for small groups and independent work, and another for full-blown centers.

How Long Should Small Groups Be?

Your small group time should match the attention spans of your children, especially in the beginning of the school year. You may start the year with less than 10 minutes per group, but as your students begin to grow and mature, you may be able to gradually increase the time.

Once you’ve assessed and grouped your students, it’s small group time! The most important thing is that you choose hands-on activities that are engaging and fun. If your activities are not interactive and playful, then they won’t be successful.

Small Group Examples

You can do almost any activity that the students in your small group need to learn. Everything from fine motor skills, letters, number recognition, counting, sorting, one-to-one correspondence, and more are acceptable small group activities. Here are some of my favorite small group activities below.

Free Editable Daily Schedule

Working with students in small groups should be part of your daily schedule. And when preschoolers have a predictable and consistent daily schedule in place and they know what your expecations are for each upcoming activity, they feel safe and secure and are ultimately more willing to learn.

I’ve taught both full and half-day schedules and I’ve included free editable templates of both types for you here. To have the editable schedules emailed to you, simply fill out the form below.

More Teaching Tips

Simply B Teaching

Effective Small Group Instruction

guided math small group lesson plans

Create guided math small group lesson plans by using predictable routines, providing time for exploration, and keeping students engaged through various challenges.

Successful K-2 Math Small Group Lesson Plans 

Creating guided math small group lesson plans can be so overwhelming. Math is filled with discreet skills, how do you know which skill to start with? While your curriculum provides a general guideline, students tend to live in an area of grey. To add more confusion while math is filled with discreet skills the application and deeper understanding of specific concepts is what leads to mathematical success. Teaching math in small groups makes the daunting task of guiding your students to deeper understanding manageable. Small group instruction is only one component of guided math in the classroom but it is the most informative on student growth and learning. Be sure to grab this guide for effective small group instruction. Read on to find out how to create a successful math small group lesson plan!

Math Small Group Instruction

Why should you use math small group instruction? The research is clear. Students learn best through social, personalized instruction that can be achieved through small group instruction . Math small group instruction should be conversational based and guide students to new discoveries through their zone of proximal development. Unsure of what your students’ zone of proximal development is? Read more about it here.

Math small group instruction should be fluid. It adapts based on student growth and the needs of the class. There are two theories on math small group instruction: it can be teacher-directed, or student-guided. Now before you jump to conclusions, I will say both types of instruction have their place and times when teaching math .

Teacher-directed math small groups most likely align with how you already envision math groups. The teacher sits around a table with 2-4 students and has a set of activities or tasks to lead the children through. It may follow a predictable “I do, we do, you do” model to gradually release the skill from the teachers’ knowledge to the students. This model is best for explicit instruction and supports students whose understanding of language may hinder their knowledge of math skills. Use this model as a guide for your guided math small group lesson plans.

Feeling overwhelmed with keeping your students engaged in meaningful learning while leading math small groups? here you can learn about classroom management strategies in the K-2 classroom to get the most out of your small group instruction. 

Teaching Math in Small Groups

Like all learning, math is collaborative. Teaching math in small groups allows students to work together and learn mathematical concepts through discovery. Utilizing small groups in math doesn’t have to take over the teacher.

First, begin with the end in mind. What are you hoping your students gain during the lesson? Extra practice or solidifying a previously taught concept is a perfectly acceptable goal.  Sometimes, I think teachers get caught up on having this grand learning target (which, don’t get me wrong, is also important) but small steps lead to big change . Students need repetition to practice and achieve target skills.

Second, decide what you want your small groups to look like. Are you beginning with a whole group task, then all children work on the same task within small groups? Are you running centers or a math menu model, where children float between math activities and teachers meet with students as needed? Or, maybe you have the entire class working on a single activity and you pull small groups to a teacher’s table to work on isolated skills. Each method has its own pros and cons. Try a few different methods for teaching math in small groups to figure out which one is the right fit for you. Your guided math small group lesson plans will evolve to meet the needs of your students, and as you grow as a teacher.

The beauty of math small group instruction is it allows the teacher to personalize each student’s learning while keeping the learning social and collaborative. Utilizing small group instruction during your elementary math time creates opportunities for hands-on learning and self-discovery. Staying consistent with your small group instruction can be so challenging! Here are my best tips for keeping on track with your math small groups.

Math Small Group Rotation

I’ll be honest – I’m not a fan of math small group rotations. I prefer to incorporate student voice and choice by students choosing what they want to work on during that block. However, I have had several years that, from a management standpoint, I had to utilize a math small group rotation in order to keep sanity within the room. There is nothing wrong with having a rotation, it’s a strategy you can utilize to keep your students on task during their math small groups. If you’re looking to have a math small group rotation, keep your activities open-ended . Think about roll and play games, matching activities, growing towers, and comparing attributes…the worst thing for a math center is to be “one and done” because if it’s not time to rotate, you will lose your students. Pro tip: keep worksheets out of your math small group rotation. 

Math Games for Small Groups

Games are a must-have in your math small group lesson plans. A deck of cards is your best friend. You can target more/less concepts, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division…seriously almost any math concept can be targeted through a card game. If you have access, traditional games are perfect math games for small groups. Some of our favorites include: Trouble, Chutes and Ladders, and Yahtzee Jr. These games are a collaborative way to teach math in small groups! Low on time? Grab some proven math games for small groups in the first-grade classroom here!

Math Small Group Template

Okay, you’ve stuck with me this long explaining why you need a math small group lesson plan, along with some great components of math groups. Here’s a general math small group template!

Whole Group Introduction 

When teaching math in small groups, begin with the whole group instruction. This is generally the instruction in your teacher’s manual if you are following a scripted program. These lessons range from practice problems to introducing new strategies or concepts, to discovering mathematical concepts through various activities.

Student Work Time

After you’ve finished your whole group instruction, it’s time for student work. This looks different in each elementary classroom as you meet the needs of your student and your teaching style. This is a teacher free work time . Struggling with how to build a teacher free work time in your classroom? Grab your free guide to effective small group instruction here.

Leading Math Small Groups

Start by reviewing the target skill (typically the whole group lesson), then dial back to the previous skill or preview the next skill based on the needs of your group. Allow time for conversation among students. During your math small groups, ask questions and observe. See if students can correct misunderstandings based on their own conversations. When leading math small groups, I often start by reviewing the skill and then engage in math conversation while working on practice problems. This often allows me to clear up any misconceptions. Then, I present the group with a challenging problem for the students to solve together. This naturally leads to exploration time and they continue working on the problem as I begin working with the next group of students. 

Teaching Math in Small Groups Online

Teaching math in small groups online can make your head spin – but it doesn’t have to! As with any change in the classroom do your best to keep the routines the same . If you begin with a practice problem in the classroom, begin with the practice problems online. If you typically end with a challenging problem, be sure to do the same. In my experience, the main difference between teaching math in small groups in the classroom and online is pacing . Online instruction has to move quickly because students are more likely to zone out. 

If you’re looking for creative ways to teach math small groups, be sure to check out these Boom Cards and other printable activities! 

Looking for more math small group ideas? Check these out!

How to Run Math Small Groups Effectively in K-2

Small Group Math Instruction

Kindergarten Math Groups Made Easy PLUS a FREE file!!!

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