Principles of Small group Time:
• Helps with efficiency
• Gives more feedback to kids across the day, week and unit
• Gets kids to practice right away
• Should be ten minute or less
• Less teacher talk and more kid talk
• Utilizes partnerships more
• Four kids is ideal if you have a large class six
• Coach kids as needed
• Equal does not need to be equitable
• Give students multi-step prompts so they are not waiting for you
• Should not feel like back and forth between teacher and student
An Example of the New Small Group Structure
Rally: During small group time the kids are gathered together for a pep talk. They can be given a compliment and a reason WHY they are together. The WHY is the teaching point
For example the teacher may say: When we edit our stories it makes our teaching books easier to read. Editors are detectives, looking for mistakes that are hiding.
Activate: The kids are shown a familiar anchor chart that relates to the WHY. Let’s look at our editing checklist.
Launch: The kids are in partnerships and may practice editing on a “demonstration” piece of text that the teacher made. Can you please help me fix this piece so it’s easier to read? Kids are supporting one another while the teacher may be giving little tips. For example, read it nice and slow like a detective. Place your pen under the words as you read. Is that a sentence? Reread that again. Go slow, be careful.
Challenge: The kids take out their own writing and look for parts that need to be fixed or partners work together on a piece.
Teach for Tomorrow: The teacher connects this work to other parts of the school day. Boys and girls you can do this kind of editing during science or social studies. When you finish your science entries go back and reread. Ask yourself, Is my writing easy to read? Do I need a capital or ending punctuation?
( I changed some of the wording to make it less complicated for teachers )
Let’s think of small group teaching from the following sports scenario:
My son Finn plays lacrosse. When I drop him off at practice, the coach often gathers the kids together, and they do a little pep talk. This pep talk could be called a RALLY. The coach is telling them what they are going to learn at practice.
Activate: The kids do some running laps around the field. This is super easy, and they don’t need any help.
Warm Up Round One :
Next, the kids throw the ball back and forth. The coach may walk around and give little tips. For example, the coach may say, “raise your arm higher.” The kids are working with a partner.
Warm Up Round Two: The coach throws the ball long. The kids practice throwing, running, and shooting. The coach yells out tips when needed. “Clancy, move faster!”
Warm Up Round Three: The kids scrimmage four against four. The coach gives quick feedback. This is the hardest part of the practice because the kids are putting it all together.
Teach for Tomorrow: The coach gathers the kids together and talks about the upcoming game and how today’s practice connects to “Game Day”. Kids are ready to beat the Boston Bears on Saturday. Today’s work on defense will help the team from this day forward.
The new structure of small groups get kids working right away. The first part the RALLY and Activate should take less than two minutes. When kids do the first warm up, it’s should feel easy . Each practice round gets a little harder. Lucy shared with us that when Teacher College was piloting the phonics lessons they realized that kids did a better job when they practiced with something easier first before the harder part. The LAUNCH, gets the kids ready for the harder task.
The other emphasis was on kids being in partnerships. When kids are working with kids, it is less teacher talk. The teacher is there supporting but it should be minimal. The teacher moves back and forth between each group. The ending is teaching for transfer. Letting kids know that what I just taught you can help you in other parts of the school day.
Hopefully, you will try this small group structure in your class.
Melissa
