Guided Reading Groups vs Skill Groups

one of the biggest debates in teaching ela for upper elementary is whether you should be using guided reading groups or skill groups in this video i'm going to be sharing with you guys the difference between a guided reading group and a skill group and which one i think most teachers should be using in their classrooms hello everyone my name is bridget spacman i'm a multi-age teacher in central pennsylvania i teach fourth fifth and sixth grade learners across all subject areas first let's talk about the purpose for small groups if we think about the tiers of intervention the first tier is going to be your whole group and this is where all students are getting the exact same form of instruction at the exact same time tier two is going to be your more focused deliberate and explicit form of instruction and this is where you're grouping together students based on a form of criteria you're providing them with an explicit lesson giving them feedback depending on the content that you're teaching your students and in tier three this is going to be your intensive instruction and this form of small groups is typically reserved for your special education students or for a special ed teacher and this is where students are pulled out to get another form of instruction uh that is separate from what you're providing within your classroom so in thinking about all of the three tiers the purpose of small group is to provide a deliberate instruction based on the needs of your students and also the content that you're providing them where things start to get a little bit finicky in upper elementary is whether teachers should be using a guided reading format or a skill or strategy is what some people might call it form of small group instruction now i'm going to go ahead and throw all my cards out there and i'm going to say that most teachers in upper elementary should be using a skill or strategy group for their students now this is not to say that you will never ever teach a guided reading group as an upper elementary teacher in fact i myself have also provided upper elementary you know guided reading groups but this should not be your main form of small group instruction so let's talk about what guided reading is guided reading is an instructional approach where you're grouping together students based on similar ability levels when it comes to reading now this is where a teacher is going to supply the text and it's going to be the exact same text to all students and the focus of the lesson is to build independent readers and to get to the next level depending on how you assess your students with their oral reading so for example i used the level dra with my class so i would assess them based on their dra levels and to get them to move forward to the next dra level so essentially i would select a text and then i would provide it to all of my students we would practice that text and this may be over a span of time on that specific level itself but the goal is to get them to use utilize strategies within their reading so that they can begin to progress to the next level in their oral reading now let's talk about a skill or what some people call a strategy group a skill or strategy group is based on learners who are working on the exact same instructional skill or strategy now students in this group may not be on the exact same reading level meaning you might have kids that are higher lower or right in the middle depending on what you have for your range of students and the whole goal of this is that despite that everyone is reading a different level text the focus is on utilizing strategies that are going to help students gain an understanding and apply a reading skill while reading for this learners do not need to read the exact same thing and so when they come to group i'm going to have a focused lesson where i provide a model of how to use a specific strategy for a skill and then i would have students practice this this can be with text that they bring to group or i can supply text depending on their level and hand those out so everybody might be reading something a little bit differently but we are all practicing the exact same strategy or skill so how do you define guided reading or skill groups i would love to know your understanding on your perspective on guided reading and skill groups go ahead and leave them down in the comments below so i think we've all really heard this saying where it says k2 is learning to read and a three to six is reading to learn and so with this in mind the focus in upper elementary is not to get students to be able to read fluently and to move to the next level this is going to happen naturally the more that your students are reading inside of the classroom and also outside of the classroom but the focus when you're looking at the standards is really going to be about how they're taking their thinking and applying different strategies and skills to their reading to really gain an understanding and analyzing a text independently so my answer to the question of should you be using guided reading groups or a skill group i'm definitely going to say that you guys should be using skill groups if you're teaching upper elementary and this is more geared for fourth through sixth grade i think third grade it's going to be a little bit tricky because you're still going to have a lot of learners who need guided reading but then you might have some students who are reading high enough to where you can start applying more skill groups now just because i'm saying you upper elementary teachers out there that's fourth through sixth grade should be using skilled groups this does not mean that you will never have a situation where you're going to be reading doing a guided reading group so in some of these situations um here's kind of an idea of how i apply guided reading into my own classroom for most students that are walking through my door i'm definitely going to say that they are utilizing a skill group format so i'm putting them inside of their skill or strategy groups now when we get learners we're going to get them at all different reading levels so i'm going to use a fourth grade as an example by the end of the fourth grade they should be reading at a level 40 that's in dra now if you're going to ask me what that is in fonteson pannell i have absolutely no idea but i'm sure you can go and look up a lovely quantital and dra chart just to see the equivalence there so by the end of the year i want them to read at a level 40. this means that most students are coming to me at a level 38 40 maybe even a 34. now with all of those students i would say 34 38 uh 36 38 and 40 those kids are gonna be in my skill and strategy groups once we start getting into the lower 30s and also into the 20s or teens for dra levels that's when things start to get really tricky students are not really able to read independently this means that they need a lot of guiding and handholding when it comes to really making sure that they're reading and understanding what it is that they're reading so for those kiddos i might have a guided reading group now i don't stick to guided reading all of the days of the week because at the same time i still need to expose them to fourth grade standards and i also want to make sure that i'm pushing them and assessing them as far as their comprehension goes so during those cases this is kind of how i would structure a week for that small group for those learners i would start the week doing guided reading and that could be about two or three days and you would have to kind of vary that depending on your students and their needs and then i would reserve the the last few days for that week to do some more skill or strategy groups now this could be where i have a mentor text i read it as a picture book and then i have my students complete a different assignment right there in group with me we're still practicing some of those skills and strategies and a lot of the times students are able to really think and articulate their thinking when it comes to a book that you read with them but they just struggle to read independently by themselves and reading orally out loud so to really kind of balance that and making sure that i'm guiding them to be able to be better readers independently but i'm also kind of pushing them as learners through comprehension i like this balance of starting with guided reading and then moving to more of a skilled or strategy group towards the very end of the week so what are your favorite techniques for helping your students and reading and writing i would love to know go ahead and leave them down in the comment section below and let me know if you would like to see more content on how i develop my guided reading groups and my skill or strategy groups i'd be happy to share more here on my youtube channel so thank you guys so much for watching i hope that you have a little more clarification on what's the difference between a guided reading group and a skill or strategy group thank you all again so much for watching and i will catch you all next time bye

Channel: The Lettered Classroom

Views: 2,738

Rating: 4.9761906 out of 5

Keywords: teacher tips, The Lettered Classroom, first year teacher, classroom setup, a day in the life of a teacher, elementary teacher, middle school teacher, how to teach, new teacher, teacher youtuber, teacher vlog, classroom ideas, upper elementary teacher, teacher life, Guided reading groups, skill groups, strategy groups, small groups, teacher, tips for teachers

Id: -KDGxFZ5xTQ

Length: 9min 13sec (553 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021