How to Intentionally Plan Small Groups
Planning small groups at the beginning of the year can be a little overwhelming. There is a lot of data to collect, and then a lot of data to analyze after you’ve gathered it all. How do you approach this time in a thoughtful, organized way, so you can ensure that each child is getting the instruction that he or she needs? Read my steps below to see how I approach intentionally planning small groups!
intentionally planning small groups
Look at last year’s data.
If this is available to you, taking a look at where each of your students left off last year will give you an idea with where to start your own data collection. Never place too much stock in the data collected at the end of the year before…a lot can change over the course of the summer. But if you see that you have a range of reading levels from a DRA 8 to a DRA 34, that will at least tell you what kinds of materials to grab when prepping for your own assessment.
Collect your own Qualitative and Quantitative data.
I just threw you back to college with those words, didn’t I? In case you need a refresher: qualitative data is data you collect that can’t be measured. In reading, this may be anecdotal notes, running records, observations, etc. However you want to do it, some of your data collection should come from simply listening to your students read and noticing where they struggle. In math, you also can collect observational data based on how the students are interacting with the material in your small groups (although I’ll be the first to admit here that math lends itself better to collecting more quantitative data than qualitative.)
You need to marry these observations with real numbers, which is called quantitative data. So, if you’re hearing that your students has a break-down with fluency, run a fluency assessment on them. If you suspect that they have some phonics gaps, give them a phonics screener. If you think they didn’t fully grasp place value in 1st grade, give them a place value test and see how they do. Collect a healthy dose of both types of data right at the beginning of the year, and spend time really watching your students.
Look for trends.
After you’ve collected all of this data, you will want to lay it all out in an organized way and look for trends. How many students are struggling with phonics? Fluency? Comprehension? In math, are they strong with computation, but struggle with problem solving? Lay it all out in a chart, highlight the similarities, and see what natural groups begin to form.
Put the kids in focus groups, based on where their data begins to breakdown.
If you gave your students a sweeping, all-standards covered pre-test for math, you’ll be able to see where each of your students began to struggle. This gives you some information on how to group them.
In reading, things are linear: students have to have mastered the bulk of phonemic awareness to do well with phonics. From there, they have to have a lot of phonics understanding to do well with fluent reading, They need to be fluent readers before they can deeply comprehend complex texts, or work on expanding their vocabulary. This is why I urge teachers not to simply put students in groups of ‘Below”, “On'“, and “Above-level”, but instead to note what each students’ need is. If you do this, you’re going to have more than one “On-Level Group”, but you’ll also know that your students are working on what they really need in order to grow.
Plan lessons centered around their weaknesses.
In math, this is easier on the surface than reading. Kids need to work on place value? Just need a whiteboard and some base-10 blocks. Need to work on fact fluency? Easy. But these focused lessons can and should happen in reading, too. Even if your school mandates that you use certain texts in your small group lessons, you can plan the way that you teach these texts to be geared towards your students needs. Choose one fluency strategy a week to focus on. Use your phonics screeners to see where you need to do a quick phonics lesson before reading the text of the week. Repeat this mini-phonics lesson every day for 3 days or a week until students have internalized it.
Take detailed notes during and after each lesson. You will want to have a pattern of qualitative data to look back on when this data cycle is over and it’s time to re-evaluate your groups.
Select a time to collect a new round of data, and move groups if necessary.
This should not happen very often. Your school may run a new data cycle every 6-9 weeks, or maybe even every 12 weeks if you operate in trimesters. Where I live, we begin a new data cycle every 6 weeks, but each grading period starts over after 9 weeks. Some data collection was determined for me by the school system (We would do a new STAR screener every 9 weeks, for example.) Others were up to me to do myself. I would plan to re-asses every 6-9 weeks, depending on how much assessment the kids were going to be put through. I would then take this new qualitative data, look at the notes I’d taken on each student throughout the week, and move my groups around as necessary.
Not every kid moves dramatically after a single data cycle. But, if you can identify why they’re struggling and find quality lessons to use to help them, the needle will move.
Some kids will leap after only one data cycle, This may be a summer slide issue. They were higher at the end of last year than they began with you, and six weeks of focused lessons with you catapulted them back up to where they should have been. Others just have a lightbulb moment after a few weeks of being explicitly taught about the thing that felt hardest to them.
Stay the course, and you will see those lightbulb moments in each of your kids before the year is over.
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