Reading Groups: Management

A few ideas on managing the class while trying to run effective reading groups:

• I try to make my schedule predictable so that the kids will know what to expect.
• I don't change my Word Work choices very often so that they don't have to be re-taught (now that they have a good repertoire of  activities, they need much less time).
• I wear a hard hat while teaching small groups (or when assessing - any time I don't want to be interrupted.)  It's a real hard hat that I painted and used scrapbooking stickers on.  I call it my "Work Hat".  When I wear it, only emergencies can be reported to me - bleeding, fire, or throwing up!  If I see someone trying to get in to talk to me during a group, I point to my hat, and they usually move along.  If they think it is important, I try to walk them through some problem solving without letting them tell me what is happening (Is someone hurt?  Is there something you can do to make it work for a few minutes until I can fix it?)
• If kids are disruptive (seems to be my Read to Someone kids, usually...) I ask them to come sit near me.  I try not to go through the rules again or anything that takes time from my group - just a few words (or a glare and point, if I'm lucky!) to get them back into the routine.
• I use a timer to keep me on schedule.  I find that they really are only able to hold it together on their own for 10-15 minutes, so I try to make sure I don't push them past that and end up with behavior problems.

Reading Groups: Scheduling

Once I was ready to start pulling reading groups, I had to come up with a plan of how I would see everyone each week.

First, I divided my students based on DRA level into 5 groups.  I have 25 students, so groups of 5 work well in my classroom.  I may have more, smaller groups as we get further along, but right now, this works.  I have one group that has my kiddos with very few letters and/or sounds; one group with my "advanced" kids, mainly those who are ready to actually read a book together (DRA levels 1-4), and then my other Pre-A kids who have a solid alphabet-sound foundation grouped into 3 groups for skills, behavior and whatever else I could think of to balance them.

This chart lives next to my teaching table.  Each of the small slips is a child's name.  The groups are easy to change.

These groups will continue to change based on the needs of my students.  I will DRA again in February, and that will determine any major changes.  I expect much more variety in my group levels after the next report card, as a few shoot ahead.

I looked at my week, and figured I have a total of 11 slots for groups.  This is based on 3 groups Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and two on Tuesday (when we go to the library).  This is VERY idealistic, but I want to push myself to stick to it, as it means I see every child every week, at least once.  I wish I could read with every child every day, but it's just not realistic in the classroom setting I am in.

I started with my lowest group being seen 3 times.  Because they are far behind the other in my class, and we are no longer working on individual alphabet letters in class as much, I wanted to make sure to I was spending time with them.

Then my next groups each got 2 slots.  After Monday, only a group's second/third session with me is scheduled in my last slot so that, if we don't get to all three sessions in a day, I am not leaving out a group's first lesson.

This is my basic weekly schedule.  Mondays involve a lot of modeling, but if I have time I get to my purple group an extra time.

When we start a session of Daily 5, I pull my reading group out first.  They sit at my teaching table while the other students choose their activities so that I don't confuse them (or myself!).  Then I assign two children to computers, and the rest get to choose Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work or Listen to Reading.

It's getting complicated, but it's working for us most days.  The kids love to meet with me, and there are enough other activities that those outside the group stay pretty busy.

Hope this helps!

Reading Groups: Resources

I started reading groups as soon as my first trimester report card assessments were in the bag.  I felt like I was assessing constantly for the first 10 weeks of school, so I rarely got to work with small groups of students.  Now, we get a break from the reporting, so I can dig into reading.

My groups are leveled by DRA level.  Most of my students were not able to read the A level book; a couple were able to go up to an A or 1; one is far beyond that.

I am using a few new resources this year.  I have Words Their Way (plus the letter and picture sorts for emergent readers edition), which has picture sorts for phonemic development.  We use these sorts for our after school intervention groups, too.

I am also using The Next Step in Guided Reading.  The great thing in this book, for me, are the lesson plan templates for guided reading groups.  It breaks down the elements to be taught in guided reading.  This is very valuable to me, since I was never really taught how to do guided reading - I was just told to do it.  That left me to make it up in a lot of ways!  This book has a set of activities to rotate or use as students show needs and templates for lesson plans for different reading levels; most of my students are in the pre-A or Emergent lessons, where a few are ready to start looking beyond.  You can print lesson plan templates similar to those in the book at Guided Reading 101.  This website is also a great resource for guided reading materials and ideas.

My goal is to have a lesson plan prepared for each group each time I meet with them...that is developing as I get more familiar with the lesson plans.

My next post will cover how I fit in my groups each week.