Reading with Partners and in Small Groups

There are times when students should choose their own roles and groups, and when students will form convenient partners with the student seated next to them, but there are also times when data should inform the decision to group students.

 

Forming Partnerships
From Productive Group Work: How to Engage Students, Build Teamwork, and Promote Understanding. Frey, Fisher, Everlove

Using your knowledge of a student’s background (native speaker or ELL, grade 8 and/or 10 MCAS scores, SRI, DRP, PSAT scores, and other quantitative and qualitative measures) make a class list in descending order of achievement.

Depending on the text and task, pair students who are similar (the highest ranked student and the second highest, the third and fourth ranked, etc.) OR who are different, combining students in the top half of the list with students in the bottom half, but avoid pairing the extremes (the highest ranked student and lowest ranked student).

 

Forming Reading Groups
From Productive Group Work

Using your knowledge of a student’s background (native speaker or ELL, grade 8 and/or 10 MCAS scores, SRI/lexile, DRP, PSAT scores, and other quantitative and qualitative measures) make a class list in descending order, divided into three levels. Group for in-class reading and active reading roles (such as Reciprocal Teaching) using some combination of:

 

1 – 1 – 1 – 2                OR      1 – 2 – 1 – 2                OR     3 – 2  – 3 – 2