Episode 325: The Real Purpose of Small Group Instruction

So that's the topic of today's episode.

We're gonna talk about the real purpose of small group instruction.

And really think about this for a second.

Maybe your purpose is to meet with every student.

Maybe it's to give students a second chance to read a book.

Maybe it's to give students opportunities to read texts that are on their level.

Maybe it's to reteach comprehension skills that you taught during a whole group lesson.

Or maybe the purpose of your small groups is because, you know, from 10:15 to 11:45, my daily schedule says that this is what I should be doing.

[laughs] Maybe you're like me at the time, and small group instruction was just something you did because you had to do it.

I divided my students up into groups at the beginning of the year.

I created a rotation schedule.

I had these beautiful slides, timers embedded in them, um, and that is how we operated in small group time.

And then I spent the rest of the year trying to figure out what we're actually going to do or what I'm actually going to teach these students at my small group table.

So if any of this sounds familiar, then you are definitely not alone because I think for a long time we focused so much on logistics and classroom management around small groups instead of actually talking about what the actual purpose is, the content we're supposed to be teaching in small groups, or the actual purpose of small group instruction.

And at the time when I asked for help with small group, all the help that I got had to do with that scheduling, grouping, that system surrounding small group and, and not necessarily about the actual content.

And what I did not know at the time was that small groups actually have a really important role in our literacy block.

So that's what we're chatting about in today's episode.

We are gonna get really clear on why we're actually pulling students into small groups in the first place.

And the answer is actually pretty simple.

The real purpose of small group instruction is to give students targeted practice on a specific skill they need with the support and feedback of a teacher.

I think that may have been a run-on sentence because it was so many things.

But the real purpose of small group instruction is to give students targeted practice on the skill that they need at the time and to do it in a way that a teacher can provide support and immediate feedback.

So that's it.

I mean, I say that's it like it's simple.

It's really not.