Differentiated Small Group Instruction Made Easy

3/14/2023

When I am asked to put the twelve elements of student engagement and ownership in order starting with the most important, I always start with small group instruction. Small group instruction is the backbone for developing data-driven learning environments, building student relationships, customizing the learning paths for individual students, and providing learning opportunities in multiple learning styles. If a classroom teacher can successfully deploy small group instruction regularly, the rest of the eleven elements will be easier and more efficient to deploy within the classroom setting.

Start Small

The best way to get started with small group instruction is to try to deploy small groups for review days. The day before the test, break the class into three groups. Group A will meet with the teacher to reteach the big concepts that might be missed on the test. Group B will be working in Independent Practice learning studio completing a review sheet. Group C will start in Digital Content learning studio explore videos or online resources that will help to increase the understanding of the unit concepts. The teacher will set a timer for ten minutes. At the end of the timer, the students will rotate to the next learning studio. Coaching Note: If you have a large class, you might want to set up a total of six groups. See the diagram to the right to run the learn studios.

Collect the Data

Make differentiated small group instruction with the deployment of a "Teacher Data Tracker". The teacher data tracker is a printed-out classroom roster that the teacher utilizes during small-group instruction.
Explore the following steps to generating a Teacher Data Tracker.

Print out an up-to-date classroom roster. Note: Find the student roster called "Student Scores - Printable."
Place the roster on a clipboard
Keep the clipboard at the small group location
When the students attend the small group studio, keep track of how the students answer the questions during the lesson.
I use a 4, 3, 2. 1 system to track how well the students did during the small group lesson.
Continue to use this same system with formative assessments and small group lessons.

The data from the data tracker will eventually be used to help drive data-driven small-group instruction. However, for now, collect the data!

Use The Data

Step 1: Start to deploy small group instruction
Step 2: Collect the Data
Step 3: USE THE DATA
Now that the classroom teacher has deployed small group instruction and collected the data with the teacher data tracker, it is time to use the data to drive the small group instruction while the students are working in learning studios. To accomplish this start by pulling back the high flyers first. They will meet with the teacher to learn or enhance the learning target for the day while the struggling students start in the digital content studio where they are relearning the concepts from a teacher created video. Coaching Note: This teacher generated video should be short and to the point, no longer than five minutes in length. The second group that the teacher will bring back would be the struggling students while the on level and high flyers move through the learning studios at their own pace with the daily checklist.
By using the data to drive which group of students come back to the small group, the teacher can differentiate the amount of time spent in the small group and can start to differentiated the small group instruction.

Sign Up for the Summer Workshop on Data-Driven Small Group Instruction Made Easy

We are offering virtual and onsite workshops on how to deploy data-driven small group instruction. The workshop showcases how to get started with deploying learning studios, how to start to collect the data from formative assessments, online programs, and small group responses, and how to use the data to differentiate the small group instruction. This hands-on workshop provides a step by step guide as well as take-aways that can be implemented into any PreK-12 classroom. Sign Up Today to Save Your Spot.