Planning for small groups can be overwhelming - but it doesn't need to be! I've mentioned before that I am a total MORE IS MORE person, so I am a PRO at trying to do too much! I've learned some tips and tricks to scale it back, reduce my prep, and save time! With a little bit of upfront prep and organization, you can plan for your small groups quickly and effectively!
Step 1: Review Your Scope and Sequence
Take a close look at your existing phonics curriculum scope and sequence if you have one. If you don't have one in place there are some great Science of Reading aligned options like UFLI, or EL Education Skills Block. Both are available online and are based on the Science of Reading.
Knowing your scope and sequence gives you a better picture of what your students are learning throughout the year, and where they should be in the beginning, middle, and end of the year.
Having a progression of skills and a clear idea of where you are and where you are going is essential to creating successful small groups and smooth rotations.
Step 2: Assess Your Students
Ideally this is done at the beginning of the year, but if you are mid-way, or even further into your year, it is not too late to start! Once you've analyzed your scope and sequence, you want to be sure your students are becoming proficient at the skills and standards they should be achieving. Small group is the perfect place to work on closing gaps, but you need to know where the gaps are first!
Your district may already have benchmarking that you use. If not, there are several great online options. Really Great Reading has some great phonics screeners. Heggerty offers phonemic awareness assessments. EL Education has extensive benchmarking testing to assess and monitor students growth in phonemic awareness, decoding, spelling, fluency, and letter ID and sound. You can access all of the above mentioned resources online for free. EL Education can be a bit cumbersome to organize and put together, if you are looking to streamline that process you might be interested in this Benchmarking Kit.
Step 3: Create Your Groups
The EL Education benchmark assessments are especially helpful in that they guide you into grouping your students. Post assessment you can easily analyze their data and use the conversion chart to determine each students microphase, making creating groups a breeze!
If you are using a different assessment system, the conversion chart might still be a handy tool. You'll take a close look at your student scores and note where the gaps appear. Digraphs? Blends? CVCE? Short vowel? Once you've mapped out where students need additional support, you can begin to create your groupings.
Step 4: Create Your Plans
This part can be tricky and time consuming. A good Science of Reading aligned small group lesson often consists of a phonemic awareness, letter-sound keyword, or articulation warm up, decoding work with blending/segmenting, word work with word building and spelling, fluency with drills or decodables, and comprehension. West Virginia Phonics has some wonderful free lessons online.
You do not need to hit every point every day, but you should aim to target weak areas as often as possible, and hit each area at least weekly. For example, maybe my lowest group is really struggling with blending words. I'm going to do activities that target that skill daily, and maybe spend part of one lesson on comprehension. Or, I have a group that is amazing with decoding, they are reading far above level, but they are struggling with spelling. I am going to spend less time on decoding practice, and more time on encoding practice.
If you are using EL Education as your district curriculum, or because you love their scope and sequence, you might find this Small Group Kit helpful. This kit is aimed at 1st grade (2nd Grade will be coming soon! K available Now!) but can also be helpful for students working above or below their microphase in K and 2.
These curriculum planners are perfect for mapping out your groups each week.
Step 5: Prepare and Organize Your Materials.
For years I found myself scrambling for small group plans every week. One great thing about grouping students by microphase is that I can follow the sequence of skills each week, and prepare my materials (mostly) in advance. I keep a plastic pouch with small group plans for each cycle.
The pouch includes my small group guide, activities, word chain lists, letter-keyword cards, decoding drills, word lists, and related decodables. It's not FULLY grab and go, because the needs of each group can be slightly different - with one group needing more comprehension work, and another needing more spelling work, but it makes my prep time minimal.
Step 6: Go! Now grab your pouch, meet with your students, and watch them GROW!
But wait! What are your other students doing while your teaching small group? Check out this post for some ideas!
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