Small Groups in COVID
Effective Small Group Instruction
How can you make small groups meaningful in a COVID, hybrid model?
Critical Incident
Since March of 2020, the entire foundation of the education system has been flipped over in the matter of months. All of the usual “norms” and routines have been completely transformed into an education model that is very foreign and rapidly changing day by day. Technology has taken on a completely new role in the classroom due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether schools are fully in person, hybrid, or fully online, technology continues to shape instruction in our classrooms in ways that have never been used before. It has been interesting to see how differently our instruction has to change due to all of the safety precautions and regulations that we now have to take into consideration. Specifically, something that has really stood out to me in the first grade classroom that I am student teaching in is how we structure the literacy block. Right now, we have not introduced stations or guided reading groups due to the fact that not only is it going to look different because we have to be 6 feet apart, my district is also in a hybrid model, so some of the students come two times a week and some of the students come three times a week. This schedule has also made it difficult to make the time to really meet with these small guided reading groups because the students are not coming to school every day. The inconsistency and limited time with the students have made this a problem.
Immediately observing this, I started to think about different ways that this problem can be rectified. The first thing that I was thinking about was how stations would look in this model, and how we could still do stations while keeping everyone safe, abiding to the COVID safety procedures. Usually in our literacy stations we have four groups who rotate through four different stations together at four different tables. The first obstacle with this is the fact that students cannot sit at a table with one another and wouldn’t even be able to if we wanted because we swapped all of the tables out with desks. Upon further reflection I think that stations might still be possible but they would be more centered around using the chrome books for various digital platforms.
When thinking about this incident I wonder how effective stations could be utilizing digital platforms when the groups aren’t one-on-one with us teachers. I also wonder if there is a way that the students could still collaborate with each other in their groups even though they are 6 feet apart. I think that stations are a great tool to use in literacy and believe that it is important to find a model that will be helpful to the students while also abiding by all of the new restrictions in the classroom.
Research Question
The question I will be researching is how can you make guided reading groups meaningful and effective in a hybrid, COVID model? I will be researching ways in which we can implement a successful and effective way to hold small group instruction based on the educational needs of my students while taking into consideration a hybrid and COVID friendly environment. Using the data provided by an online resource we use called Lexia, in addition to running records, dibbles testing, and informal observations I make in class, we will be able to group the students based on what they need in word work and in reading. For example, through recent observations, I have noticed that two of the students in our green cohort have struggled with decoding words utilizing open and closed syllables to help them figure out the word. Now we have moved on to “magic e” but they have still not mastered simple cvc words. We started brainstorming different ways we can create a skills group so that those students can gain the extra support they need to be able to decode words which include teaching decoding strategies in “rabbit”, “tiger” and “camel” words.
Research points to the fact that small-group instruction is better when you have less students per group. The increase in instructional time, paired with the increased time that the students can work collaboratively safely, gives students the chance to be successful in learning the skill that needs improvement (Elbaum, Hughes, Moody, & Vaughn, 2001). This actually plays well with the COVID model because you can really only have up to three people safely at the kidney table with the teacher. Due to the fact that we are live streaming most of our literacy block, there is a limited amount of time for small groups. Through the reconstruction of our literacy block and utilizing time in the morning before morning meeting, we are going to meet with skills groups where we can target individual needs.
In order to do this effectively, we will need to take data off of Lexia, and other testing methods in order to pinpoint what the students need. Lexia is a fantastic resource because after each level is completed we are provided a skill report of what questions the students struggled with in addition to educational resources that we can use that correspond to that skill. This can be used for direct instruction during the small group time. While we are pulling small groups, we can utilize learning centers for the remaining students that will use more digital platforms than student to student interaction.
Action Research Cycle #1
a. In our first group we decided to pull the kids in the morning during their morning work. We recently were told that the students need to do their Symphony Math sessions in school which typically last 15 minutes. As a result we began to have the students do this for morning work so that we did not take away from math instruction. On the day that we pulled students in the morning I noticed that they missed their session and were not able to complete it during any other point in the day. We also had students strolling into the classroom at different times so it was a hard balance to see when we should start the group or if we should give the other student more time to come before we started. This day we were working with the lowest reading group who were students in the "red zone". These three students struggle with decoding words and therefore are struggling readers. We worked on a decoding strategy with them that we had taught full group the last day that they were in school. This strategy teaches them a "spot and dot" method to decoding rabbit words that have a cvvc pattern. In this strategy the students were given words that follow this pattern. For example, we showed them the word Rabbit. First the students had to spot and put a dot under the vowels in the word before drawing a line and connecting them. Afterwards they have to label the letters that were on the line they just created so that it said cvvc. After they learned that you split draw a vertical line in between the cv I vc. They then had to circle rab and bit and label them with a closed face. Afterwards they pronounced each syllable and clapped them together to get the word rabbit.
b. The students did this on a wipe off board so that they could easily erase mistakes and follow along with the process. I noticed that the three students were making the same common mistake. When it got time to label the letters they were pushing them to be really close together instead of directly underneath the corresponding letter so when it came time to split the cv I vc they were splitting the letters at random so there were 4 letters on one side and then 2 on the following. As a result they were not able to read the syllable that they just chunked because it was incorrect. This meant that they then could not clap the syllables together to decode the rabbit word that we put. As a result the following word I took extra care to show them how to properly line up the cvvc under their word so that when it came time to split the word into two syllables they could easily. This strategy seemed to work better for the students and I could immediately see more growth in chunking the syllables and pronouncing them separately the correct way. Something else I noticed with two of the students is once they broke down the word into two syllables they were able to pronounce each separately but when it came down to clapping them together it was as if they completely forgot what they had just decoded.
c. This was a skills group that was taught with a wipe off board and eraser. This is something that we do with the full group using the same method but the students that were pulled for the group really needed more one on one instructions on how to properly follow the decoding strategy. I found that by using a wipe off board and eraser, the students were really able to space out their letters and see what step I was on considering the COVID procedures. We went through a total of 4 words with these students in about 15 minutes. The words we decoded were rabbit, picnic, napkin, and tennis. By the last and final word all three students were able to break down the word the way that they were supposed to on their own but still needed help with putting the syllables together. This is a skills group that will be pulled to reinforce this strategy and provide them with more decoding strategies through tiger and camel patterns.
Action Research Cycle #2
a. During this particular session, I decided to pull a group of students who were still struggling with a lesson that I had taught in the morning. After giving the whole group an exit slip to look for understanding of topic, main idea, and supporting details, I noticed that these three students in particular still were not understanding what each of those terms meant even though there was an anchor chart provided and we had discussed the topic, main idea, and supporting details of the mystery bag prior to writing it. At the end of the day when the students are usually working on their Lexia session, I pulled three students to the kidney table for about 10 minutes to go over their exit slips. On the data that I analyzed all three of the students did not identify the correct topic, main idea, or supporting details. I found that pulling them on the same day we did the lesson was effective because the material was still fresh in their heads and if I waited, due to the hybrid model, I would have to wait and additional day until they were back in school. While this might not always be feasible to do, I saw that the afternoon was more of "fix and finish" time, so I was able to pull them from their session while everyone else was working to reteach the main parts of the lesson in the morning. The three students that I pulled are students that are at or above grade level which was very interesting to me. I thought that they would have had more success with the graphic organizer, but they seemed to be the ones to over analyze what we had previously talked about.
b. I noticed that two of the boys that I pulled did not put any of the information correct. Instead of looking at all of the pictures as a whole to see what they had in common for the topic, they got fixated on one of the pictures (the dentist cleaning someones teeth) and filled out the graphic organizer based off of that. The other boy that I pulled seemed to not understand how to fill out the graphic organizer based off of the fact that he wrote the literal words topic, main idea, and details where they should have been on the graphic organizer. While I think that this could have been because he didn't understand the directions, I pulled him with these two individuals because they are all around the same level and felt as if he needed more clarification on the lesson. The remaining class seemed to have a better handle on the lesson segment because they were all able to fill out the graphic organizer with the correct topic, main ideas and details. While initially working with these students I noticed that the students were still struggling with differentiating between the topic and the main idea as a whole. They kept saying that the main idea was the topic. In order to try and help with this I took out one of the mystery bags and put it out in front of us. Together picture by picture we listed some of the things that they had in common. Then together on wipe off boards we generated the topic of the mystery bag. Afterwards, we moved on to the main idea or authors message and talked about what the pictures were trying to tell us. I repeated this process with supporting details so that the students could then retell our story using the words topic, main idea, and details. The students needed this reengagement lesson because they were not fully understanding the structure of a nonfiction text and needed more modeling and scaffolding on how to think about how they could find it.
c. This was a reengagement lesson that was taught using a wipe off board and eraser along with our mystery bags and their graphic organizers. Prior to this I provided the students with some feedback on their papers that I would then discuss in more depth during our kidney table talk. Since the whole group lesson was their first exposure to nonfiction text structure, I found that the students really needed to be able to verbalize the topic, main idea, and details before writing it down. As shown on the graphic organizers, the students did not grasp these terms on the first pass so I felt that it was necessary to model the thought process that I go through when I am trying to identify what the topic, main idea, and details are for nonfiction texts. This modeled gives the students new strategies that they can use and ask themselves when they are trying to understand the authors message. The students were able to use their wipe off boards to identify a topic, main idea, and details after we first modeled the think aloud and worked as a group to identify key details that we noticed. It was very important for me to have the students walk away from the table with a better understanding of those key words, and to be able to verbalize what they were and how to justify themselves.
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Action Research Cycle #3
a. In my last session I decided to pull the students that I had pulled in the second action research cycle to see how much they improved with topic, main idea, and supporting details. I decided to pull this group at the end of the day while the students were working on Lexia and Symphony Math because I found that last action cycle this was a good time since it was quiet and did not pull them from work that they needed to get done that second. During this time I pulled the same three kids to my kidney table to discuss a new mystery bag with different clues. I wanted to see if the students could use the feedback that I had provided in the previous action cycle in order to come up with the correct topic, main idea, and details. Prior to this I had the students completing a different mystery bag activity where they had to look at pictures on the Smart Board and match the topic, main idea, and details from the word bank. I provided a word bank in the hopes that the students would soon be able to come up with these text structures on their own with time. I pulled the students in this session for about 12 minutes because while they were not missing anything per say, they still needed time to get their Lexia session in by the end of the day and they had already finished up the remaining work so they did not necessarily have to "fix and finish" anything else. While looking at the data from their Smart Board mystery bags, I found that these three students seemed to have a better grasp on how to use the word bank and now wanted to see if they could come up with their own answers with not much scaffolding.Practice with the Mystery Bags prior to Action Research Cycle 2:
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Practice with Mystery Bag with brand new pictures:
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Preliminary Bibliography
Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G. (1996). Guided Reading: Good first teaching for all children. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
This book goes into the steps of how to effectively implement small group instruction in the classroom in a way that will help the students really thrive. This book provides different strategies that teachers can use in order to reach their students in the most effective way.
Gaffner, Jacqueline, et al. Guided Reading in First-Fourth Grade: Theory to Practice, 2014, pp. 117–126., doi:https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1110820.pdf.
This journal discusses the benefits of guided reading groups in first through fourth grade. What was most interesting about this article is that it took data from guided reading groups in an elementary school and groups in the college level in order to see the positive outcomes. This research study looked into the impact of small reading groups as a means of determining overall reading performance.
James-Burdumy, S., Mansfield, W., Deke, J., Carey, N., Lugo-Gil, J., Hershey, A., & Faddis, B. (2009). Effectiveness of selected supplemental reading comprehension interventions: Impacts on a first cohort of fifth-grade students (NCEE 2009-4032). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences.
This journal looks into the impact of the reading comprehension curricula on test scores and found that they were significantly lower than that of school districts that put a heavy emphasis on intervention strategies for struggling readers. We do not have a literacy curriculum so I found that this journal was particularly interesting because it showed how valuable small group instruction is, specifically for students that are struggling readers and need help with decoding and encoding.
Kemple, J., Corrin, W., Nelson, E., Slinger, T., Herrman, S., Drummond, K., &Strasberg, P. (2008). The enhanced reading opportunities study: Early impact and implementation findings (NCEE 2008-4015). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences.
This journal discusses the important implications of providing opportunities for students to gain reading strategies at a younger age. Specifically, this looks at ninth graders who are struggling readers and point to the idea that had they had more explicit reading instruction in earlier years they would have more tools to help them be fluent readers.
Ramey, S. & Ramey, C. (2005). Early educational interventions: Principles of effective and sustained benefits from targeted early education programs. In D. K. Dickinson & S. B. Neuman (Eds.). Handbook of early literacy research (Vol. 2, pp. 445-459). New York: NY, Guilford.
This journal discusses the benefits of targeted reading groups in early elementary school years. This journal also provides strategies in how you can apply small groups in the most effective way in the classroom. While this is more targeted for seeing students more than two or three times a week, it provides insight on how to organize your groups.
Vaughn, Sharon, et al. “Grouping Students Who Struggle With Reading.” Reading Rockets, 14 Nov. 2013, www.readingrockets.org/article/grouping-students-who-struggle-reading.
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