Welcome back to the Education Connection. I am your host, Robin Wilson. I am a public
school teacher with a master's degree in elementary education from Indiana, Wesley,
and University. Teaching is my passion. I love to teach reading, and so today my topic
is about teaching small group reading instruction. So let's talk about small group, small group
reading instruction today. But before we can get to small groups, we need to get our assessments.
Depending on your grade level, you need to assess your students differently. So in first grade,
what we are right now testing is for alphabet recognition, sounds, reading level, and sight
words. So we've been in school for about a month, and we've been working on this since the beginning
of school, and I still have some left to do. But we want to get our students kind of leveled
about where they are in their reading, because further down the road, we're going to set them
up in groups according to their level. But right now, we're just going to talk about their procedures
today for setting up small groups. Once you have your levels, and actually even before you get your
levels, you can actually practice this with your groups in any level. You can put them together in
different levels right now for just practicing. But I love to start with quiet reading groups, and I
say quiet, however they are not quiet. They must read out loud to understand the text at this age,
and actually anything that is above your level, you find yourself reading out loud. I know I do. If
I'm reading the back of directions of a medicine bottle or a bill that isn't making sense, or a
medical article, I find myself reading it out loud to understand. And this is what your students are
doing too. Eventually, I like to try to get them to whisper reads so that other students can focus
on their books too. Anyway, it's day one of practice. You can put leveled books in their groups, or
maybe topic books on each table, such as dinosaurs, bears, fairy tales, or cats and dogs. So get their
attention, have them all be looking at you, sit down with them at one of the tables, and model for
them how to reach in, pick a book, sit down, turn the pages, and pose as a reader. You're going to
have some that know their sounds and their letters. You're going to have some that don't even know
that. I've had years where they weren't even able to understand their letters and sounds. So what I
like to do is model for those students to picture read until they get to a place that they are
starting to read. So I actually pick up a picture book and I start modeling and making up the story
just looking at the picture so that they can see how to do that. And they can actually become a part
of the reading process, even if they're not reading. This ensures that every child in your room is
actively engaged in the reading process. You're going to have some that know small sight words. So
for these students, you're going to model for them to how to find the sight words. So you might say,
oh, I know the word A on this page, I'm going to write that down. I know the word the on this page.
I know the word he on this page. And our desks are actually the whiteboards. So what we like to do is
give them dry erase markers, and then they can actually write down the words that they know on
that page. And even if they're not reading the book, they are finding words that they know.
For readers, I go ahead and demonstrate how to whisper read. So I might read an actual page or
two for those students, because there are going to be readers in your room, you're going to have
all levels. Either way, every single student in your room is reading or reading the pictures in
some fashion. After I've demonstrated this procedure, I show them what not to do. Now,
this is kind of fun. It's kind of silly, but it's very needed. I pick up a book and I pretend to
throw it. I don't release it, but I pretend like I'm going to throw it. And then I talk about why
we don't throw books in our classroom. I might walk around and pretend to show someone just very
dramatically across the room that my dinosaur book is so cool. I ask the teacher if I can sharpen my
pencil. I will take off running around the room. Of course, I get a lot of giggles, but this shows
them what they cannot do. And if you don't show them what they can't do, they're going to assume
they can do it. They're young children and they need that differentiation for you to show them
physically what they can do and what they should be doing. We're going to continue to practice this
until we understand what a quiet reading group is or whisper reading group looks like. Now,
this takes anywhere from three to five days of practice. I have had it take up to a week and a
half, close to two weeks. Some years, it is even taking longer. So you just have to determine in
your class how long it's going to take. Very first time we do this, I'm going to set a timer for
five minutes and celebrate if we can all do this group correctly without breaking procedure. The
next day and the second time, I challenge the class to see if we can go a little bit longer. The
third day, we might try for eight minutes. The fourth day, we try for 10 minutes. And so you can
see how this kind of takes a little bit longer from than a practice. And we can just continue to do
it until we get it down for the most part. While they are quote reading, walk around the room and
make small corrections to those that still need help and remembering to do the right thing. At the
end, give everyone a positive reinforcement you have set up in your class. One thing we do in our
classroom is give positive tickets to earn extra recess. Plan on a few students that will break
that procedure. So you might have to have a mini conference with them at a private time away from
the other students just to go over the procedure again. This just lets them know how important this
is to you and how serious you are taking groups. And so that you really do want them to follow that.
We just practice again and again until they understand your goal is to help them begin
to become independent. So later, you can pull groups back to work with them at their level or
gaps that they have extra that need extra support. The second week or until you have established
procedures in this group, you can begin another group of your choosing. We will establish computer
groups next. Most corporations have a set computer program that is required for your students. The
first day you're just showing them how to carry their computer. That's all you have to do that
first day, how to get it out of the computer cart, unplugging it correctly, how to walk with it with
both hands to their seats and how to sit down correctly. Once everybody is sitting down, you can
reward. And that's really enough for the first day. With older students, you can move faster. So
day two, you you can log on. Now, one of the biggest things I learned early on is that I needed to
have something else for the students to be doing while I'm getting each one of them logged on or
showing them how to log on to their computer. So we might explain how to play with blocks first or
how to color a picture or something until we can get around to everybody because what you're
going to have is you're going to have 20 students tapping you, surrounding you, some with tears,
because they can't get logged on, they're calling you out, they're asking you for help to help them
get logged on. So if you have something able else for them to do, maybe even some groups on the
floor and then you call them over when you're ready to help them one at a time, the first time
then you can give them your individualized attention and they can be occupied until you get to them.
It saves so much to do that. So there you have it. The third week you continue with a station of
your choosing and so forth. Once you have three stations that are following procedures, pretty
good, you're ready to start small group reading stations to where you can be doing four different
stations. So three stations are independent and then one station you're able to pull back and work
with them individually because that is your goal. Your goal is to get them independent so that you
can really work with groups at their level and not always just the students that are not reading
because that also gives you time when you pull back the students that are your high readers to take
them even higher and maybe not reading higher level books but maybe just going deeper with
comprehension and with some deeper level thinking about that or even sometimes you can get a book
club started with your high reading groups so that they're not bored with you know learning that
ABCs are tapping out the letters like maybe some of the other groups are. So that is all I have
for today and I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Thank you so much for joining in.