Centers! Small Groups! Leveled Reading! Guided Reading! Foundational Skill Groups! Whatever you want to call it, we’re obsessed! We’re told that small groups are the way for kids to get exactly what they need. 

But how do you pull off foundational skill groups without sacrificing time for Tier-1 instruction? And how do you make that independent time valuable for all students (i.e. NOT Chromebook or busywork time)? And should you be using small groups at all? 

In the following conversation, Katie Scotti and Miranda Eldridge, two Goyen Literacy Fellows, explore these questions and reflect on the differences between their schools. 

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Katie: I used to use small groups and the Daily Five in my classroom all the time. The kids seemed engaged, but when my district adopted Wit and Wisdom, I started to realize that kids really weren’t learning during that small group time, especially my weakest students. I was also spending a lot of time planning for small groups with no outcomes to show for it. 

Since then, I’ve found that it’s most effective to teach the entire class at once and minimize small group time. 

But here’s the problem: we’ve adopted Just Words as a foundational skills program to complement Wit and Wisdom. Right now, I’m only using it with six of my struggling students, for 20 minutes a day, but I’m supposed to be implementing it in small groups for the entire class. I want small groups to work in my classroom, but I also don’t want to waste time. So I guess my question is: 

What, if any, productive, independent work can kids be doing during small group time? 

Miranda: Before we get into this, I’m going to ask some clarifying questions. First, how many students do you have in your class?

Katie: I have two classes, 30 students each. In each class, I have 6 kids doing foundational skills work with me and then 4-5 kids per class doing fluency work with an interventionist during that small group time. 

Miranda: How many interventionists does your school have?

Katie: My school has one intervention teacher for grades K-8 or 550 students. She is available to work with my students for roughly 30 minutes a day. 

Miranda: Wow, we have about 24-25 kids in each class, and that feels like a lot, so 5 extra students would make it even harder to manage. 

Katie: Yeah, that’s the thing, that’s why this conversation is so important for teachers and school leaders to hear. There are a lot of schools like mine—big classes and minimal interventionist support. Even if the district is purchasing great programs, preparing teachers well, and getting teachers to buy into the work, the logistics of the programs can make them really hard to navigate. 

Miranda: Right, and then there’s this mindset among teachers and administrators that you can just have your other students read independently while you work with small groups. 

Katie: Exactly. But what happens, in reality, is that the kids who are struggling the most become behavior problems, even though it’s not their fault. We’re setting them up to misbehave. 

Miranda: So I’m going to tell you a little bit about how our school approaches. We have about 415 kids in grades K-5. We have three interventionists for reading, one interventionist for math, one ELA TA, and 1 math TA. 

In 4th and 5th grade, we have an hour-long block set aside for What I Need (WIN) and small group differentiation (30 minutes each). During that time, the classroom teacher is running small differentiated groups, AND the interventionists are pulling out kids who are struggling the most. All intervention (speech, reading, math, you name it) happens during that one-hour block, and often our kids who are struggling the most get multiple interventions, so they’re not even in class during this time. That reduces a lot of the behavioral problems during independent work because those struggling kids are rarely working independently. 

Katie: What kind of independent work are your students doing during those times? 

Miranda: We use the Bookworms curriculum, which has a major writing component. So after their ELA block, they often work on independent written work when they’re not meeting with their teacher. This works pretty well for us because they’ve just finished a connected whole-group lesson that sets them up for writing. They’ve already talked about the question. Maybe they’ve already started writing. So the kids should have enough support and preparation to do their writing independently. 

Katie: So what happens if kids finish their writing early? 

Miranda: We’re ready for that. Basically, every teacher starts out with a must-do assignment, and then kids have a choice of things to work on. Some kids will have other unfinished assignments to work on, not necessarily ELA work. They might be working on Reflex Math or a science assignment or something else. The WIN period is not just for ELA.   

Katie: How do you fit this 60-minute block into your school day? 

Miranda: Teachers don’t make their own schedules. They are given a set schedule. They don’t get to decide when they teach math or at what time their ELA block is. This makes it so much easier to coordinate intervention time. For example, all 4th grade classes have their WIN block at the same time. This means that the interventionist can pull out 4th graders in different classes to work on fluency, for example. This also means that 4th grade teachers can collaborate and mix up their classes for small groups, depending on what the kids need. It’s much more efficient that way. 

Katie: Scheduling is so important. This is something that came up again and again at ResearchED. Your schedule shouldn’t be an afterthought. When districts make schedules, they need to think carefully and strategically about time if they want to get students the research-based intervention that they need. How did teachers at your school feel about not having control over their schedule?

Miranda: We made this shift three years ago, and at first teachers were upset about not having the choice and control, but now we’re all so thankful that everything runs more efficiently. We’re just wasting less time, and kids are getting what they need. 

Katie: One thing I’m thinking about here is that a lot of people are looking for a quick band-aid solution. It’s not enough to say “let’s give all classes an hour for differentiated instruction and WIN.” We need to structure that hour really carefully. We need to think about when it falls during the school day. We need to tell people where they need to be and what they should be doing. Otherwise, I think it’s easy to imagine students ending up on their computers during busywork for that hour. 

Miranda: Another key thing is that the differentiation block is NOT a replacement for the ELA block. It’s a time to extend skills, spend time writing, and get extra support. Your ELA block should not be a small group rotation period. 

Katie: The other thing to call out here is that there’s a big resource gap. Even if our schedule was perfectly set up, my school doesn’t have enough interventionists to replicate what Miranda’s school is doing. We need to be honest about that. 

Miranda: So back to your original question: what if any, productive, independent work can kids be doing during small group time? 

Katie: I’m not sure. Honestly, I wish we could follow your model with all of the intervention teachers. But right now, I just want my kids to get the interventions that they need. That’s really hard to do. I feel like I’m rushing through those intervention lessons. They take place in my classroom with 25 other kids in the background, and that makes it hard to deliver an effective lesson. In the Just Words videos I’ve watched, the teacher is teaching alone in a room with a small group of students. I can’t do that. No one at my school can do that. 

I like the idea of using that time for kids to work on their Wit and Wisdom writing task. They’ve all been given very direct, explicit instructions on how to write the essay. Then if they finish, I could see having them do more knowledge-building work that relates to whatever we’re learning about in Wit and Wisdom, not just some random task. 

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So what are your takeaways from this conversation? Here are a few of ours:

1. Your ELA block should NOT be small groups. It should be full-class instruction. We want to reiterate that at Miranda’s school, students have 90 minutes of whole-group ELA instruction. They are only in small groups or doing independent work during the 60-minute WIN/Differentiated instruction period. 

2. What works in one school might not work in another school. 

3. A school’s schedule is really important.

4. We need to be honest and transparent about inequities between schools and how these inequities play out in small and large and obvious and subtle ways.

5. We need to have honest conversations like this one more often and more publicly.