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About the Webconference
The way students are grouped during reading small group instruction and intervention impacts their reading progress. However, most teachers do not group students in ways that will lead to significant reading improvement. Teachers often design groups around nonspecific reading levels and average benchmark scores using universal screeners or curriculum-based measures data.
Designing small group instruction from generic universal screener data leads to several problems. First, non-specific measures mask critical details about why a student is at a particular reading level and what they need to learn to advance. Second, it hinders teachers from identifying appropriate interventions and resources to best address students’ reading needs. As a result, students who receive this “onesize-fits-all” intervention approach are less likely to achieve meaningful gains in their reading progress. To maximize the effectiveness of smallgroup instruction, teachers need to use a different approach.
Districts that have achieved large-scale reading success not only aligned their tier one instruction with the science of reading, but they also deployed a skills-based grouping approach for small group instruction. Rather than grouping students with similar generic reading levels, this approach groups students by specific skill deficits and targets instruction to address each skill. Although students in skills-based groups may have different reading levels, they all share a specific instructional need. Skills-based grouping is an iterative process that requires frequent monitoring and regrouping.
This on-demand webconference will introduce proven ways to enhance the effectiveness of small group instruction and intervention. We will discuss how to reorganize student reading groups around skill deficit rather than level. We will also discuss how teachers can support students across grade levels to maximize teacher expertise.