ion, but their independence once set up with a task is great. These students also require shorter conferences as they can take a teaching point and run with it faster. I rarely hold small groups for those independently strong readers as they just need a push to get going.
Readers Focusing on Primary Skills
First of all, my choices with these students depend on the level of independence they can exhibit during work time (reading appropriately leveled books) and how much pull out they receive from other staff, but here is what I do next:
- Leverage Technology – My school has some programs such as Imagine Learning which is useful for teaching primary skills and language since it teaches in both Spanish and English to support vocabulary growth. MyOn and other programs will read aloud to students. Some students will do Starfall or other primary apps and games, but by sixth grade, these are less and less appealing.
- Matching Games – I love getting students set up with a quick game that works on phonics or phonological awareness. I have access to matching sets that have a letter and a picture where the picture’s word starts with that letter. These puzzles are all self-checking because they only fit when they match. Even though these are primary skills based, students tend to do these without much concern. This might be because games are a part of my classroom environment in general.
- Read Aloud with the student – I wish I could do this more than I do, but nothing beats just reading with the student and talking through vocabulary. I also like doing sound or word hunts such as “Look for a word that ends in -ing, Which words start with ‘ssss’; Which words rhyme; Which words have the same sound at the end; What is the base word of started?” Just playing with words, recognizing patterns, and talking about words is great.
- Buddy Reading – I will borrow from primary and teach students to buddy read. They can take turns, alternate pages. Granted, this works better when you have students who are at least within similar levels.
- 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 