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- Primary Writing Pages – I will take the primary pages that have a large picture at the top and lines for sentences at the bottom and give them to students. Sometimes, I’ll write sentence frames for students to get started. Sometimes, I’ll write that sentence frame in both Spanish/home language and English if I feel that’s meaningful and helpful for the activity. Not all ELLs read and write in their home language, so that isn’t always beneficial.
On grade level students
These students tend to have some gaps in comprehension so it can be helpful to teach them how to use reading partnerships. I also like doing strategy small group lessons with students in this way. I can have them gather with me to work on phrasing in reading fluency or inferencing by using what you know isn’t true, for example. I can do a quick 2 minute lesson on what I want to teach them, we can practice using a short shared text, then I can have them work on that same skill in their own independent reading book. I can do this structure with book clubs or with independent reading/choice books and still group by strategy. This is my favorite type of small group in the upper grades. I use data from DRA2 Assessments and other classroom data to create these groups. It is fine to see some students more often and some less often. With some groups, I often only have to see them once in a small group then follow up in a conference, and they’re much stronger in that skill.
Students 1-2 years below grade level
These students need a delicate balance of challenge and support. I find many of these students want to read what their on grade level peers are reading, but they are mystified as to how to get there. I also see these students resist accommodations such as read alouds/audio recordings, graphic organizers, images and visualizing. I will often allow these students to reach for the more difficult texts so that they can feel part of a book club. Many people might criticize this choice (and that is 100% fair). I think I would feel differently if I were teaching even a grade younger. In sixth grade, though, they want to feel accepted, and if I bar them from participating in a book club that’s reading something that’s a grade level or two above what they can read independently, they will hate me for it and they will believe that I don’t believe they can do it. If they can come to the realization that the book isn’t working for them, then we can readjust in a healthy conversation. Also, when everyone else moves onto a new book, they can re-read the one they already read and experience greater success the second time around with new peers. Choices matter, and the more choices I remove for a student, the more they see the limits I place on them as a limit in my belief in their abilities rather than a logical choice based on their zone of proximal development. Will they get everything out of that book at the same level as their on grade level peers? No. Will they learn more if they’re happy? Yes. Will they learn a lot from the models of their on grade level peers? YES! They will learn so much by being in a book club. Even if they mostly listen in on their conversations and don’t add as much as other peers, they’re still gathering valuable cues of what a reader does. Does this mean I let them just struggle and sort of shuffle along? No! I also am going to be extra vigilant reading with this student pivotal passages of the text and teaching them in small groups. Also, they should be getting instruction at books in their levels perhaps in guided reading or strategy groups, depending on their level. They will not always be stretching themselves by reading challenging books for book clubs.
Students who “seem” fine but also seem, well, not fine
I write a lot more about the path I take for older students who are missing foundational skills and might need intervention here. In short, I often see sixth graders who struggle with phonics, phonological awareness, decoding and spelling multisyllabic words, basic punctuation and grammar rules, fluency, phrasing, and expression. Th