Why You NEED a Small Group Tracker.

First off, let me just say that as of today, if you Google search “Small Group Tracker”, the first link that pops up is my resource!

This is evidence that so many of you are already using this product or you are contemplating getting it, well at least I hope because this will change how you teach and support your learners!

So what’s the big deal anyway? Well, you can’t use a small group tracker if you’re not even doing small group instruction. So let’s start with why small group instruction is important.

Small group instruction is effective because teaching is focused precisely on what the students need to learn next to move forward. Ongoing observation of your students, combined with systematic assessment enables you to draw together groups of students who fit a particular instructional profile.

— Fountas & Pinnell

1. Meeting the Needs of All Students

Small group instruction is imperative to meeting the needs of all of your students. In fact, it is a highly effective differentiating instruction strategy. You will no doubt have learners who require more support, and it doesn’t matter how advanced the class is. As the educator, you must be able to identify students in need of intervention and provide evidence-based support systems to promote their academic achievement. Levels of intervention may vary–from monitoring student progress to re-teaching and remediation. You may find that a couple of students need a quick re-teach on skills or concepts taught during the lesson and you want to observe how they work through some of the problems. It may also be the case that a student needs support with understanding key terms or vocabulary related to the content in order to be successful with the work. It could also very well be the case that a student has no idea what is going on and you may need to fill in some gaps before supporting the student on new material. Whatever the need is, it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. Small groups are the perfect way to meet every students’ need.

2. Ongoing Formative Assessment

Formative assessments is one of the greatest assets to differentiating instruction strategies. I am a huge advocate of formative assessments! I am constantly researching and learning about efficient ways to track student learning in real time, because let’s be honest, we only have 45 minutes to get through an entire lesson/activity. Therefore, we have to be strategic about how we are collecting our data and how we are using it right away to drive our instruction. While formative assessment is critical to identifying what students have mastered and what students are still struggling with, it provides super helpful information on helping you determine how you can re-group students and who you need to pull into a small group. Once you have grouped your students, for an activity, or tiered independent practice, and you have your small group ready for intervention, you can continue assessing student learning, in real time and now, with purpose as opposed to just collecting data, for the sake of collecting data.

3. Personalized Instruction

This is personally my favorite reason to pull small groups in my classes. Without a doubt, small group instruction allows you to work in a more intimate setting with a group of students. Students sometimes feel more comfortable to share their thinking and their reasoning with you and a few other peers as opposed to the entire class. While small group instruction allows for a more personal setting, it also lends you the perfect opportunity to collect students’ learning strengths and locate gaps in the development of their skills. This information is important because it helps you make adjustments to your lesson right away. One thing I have realized about teaching is that your lesson plan should change every time you attempt to teach it. Because you have a room full of diverse learners all with different needs, there will surely be adjustments that need to be made based on student performance at multiple points during a lesson. Be aware of that and take action. Use small group instruction is also a perfect way to target students who are not as vocal during class discussion. Having these students join your small group provides a perfect opportunity to get familiar with students’ thinking process.

Recording Your Observations with a Small Group Tracker

Now that you know why small group instruction is important, hopefully you will began implementing it into your own practice, if you haven’t already. Once you’ve gotten a routine down, you definitely want to make sure that you have record of your small group interventions and evidence for why you targeted your specific group of students. One way to do this is by using a small group tracker. If you are not tech-savvy, you may want to try the ELA or Math paper trackers instead.

How to Facilitate Small Group Instruction

First determine why you have pulled each student into your group. You may want to look at formative assessment data from the prior lesson as well as how students performed on the opener/do now and mid-lesson check for understanding. Be sure to write that information down. I typically start my small group instruction in math by giving one problem for the whole group to do. Each student in my group is working on that one problem, in their packet or on a whiteboard. Students can talk to each other as they work but must show their own work. I want students to talk because learning from each other is almost more powerful than learning from the actual instructor.

While students are working, discussing, or reading, if that is the case, you should be making observations. Write down, or type, noticings, or strategies your students are implementing, and/or misconceptions your students may be making. Listen to the conversations that they are having, write down things that stand out to you.

Then go over the problem or have a student in the group walk everyone through how they did the work. This is the opportunity to facilitate discussion to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to problem solving. Now, pose a new problem or situation and have the students work it out, or discuss it with you or their peers. If you prefer, you can have students do it completely independently. As students are working, continue your assessment of your student’s learning. If students were able to demonstrate mastery, figure out next steps–possibly moving them back into the whole group or continue to monitor their work. If students were not able to demonstrate mastery, consider additional interventions to promote their mastery of the content.

I hope now you have a better sense of how to conduct small group instruction to better support your students. Remember, you are the educator and you have to make sure the needs of all of your students are met!

What does small group instruction look like for you? What type of tracking system do you use?