The Challenge: Small-Group Instruction is NOT a Time of Day

One of my main jobs as an instructional coach was to create and provide professional development. The topics ranged from implementing our new writer’s workshop curriculum to developing students’ reading motivation to scoring student writing with our holistic rubric. One of the PDs that I developed and presented was around our newly created literacy block—an 80-minute chunk of time that teachers could use for flexible teaching every single day of the school year. I was especially excited about this because one thing that we consistently heard from teachers was that they assessed students regularly, but they didn’t have time to do anything with those assessments. This newly-developed literacy block would surely be loved because it would give teachers the much needed time to do some reteaching, and it would give students time to develop a love of reading, work on specific needs (such as developing reading fluency), or to continue their work from what was done during the small-group time. Teachers would now have a designated time to teach those who were absent for the initial instruction, and students would have time during the day to complete a retake of a standards-based assessment. This is a snip of the sample schedule that was created to share during the professional development. I look at these things now and wonder how I was ever selected for any leadership position.

The first bullet point under flexible groupings reads “Unit of study needs.” These units of study were actually our homegrown reading curriculum, so while it shares a name with another popular reading curriculum, the two are not related in any way. Our homegrown curriculum focused on standards and trying to teach those in isolation. When students failed to demonstrate growth or mastery with a particular standard, teachers were to pull those students into a small group to provide reteaching. This was supposed to be the first example of differentiation—we only reteach standards to students demonstrating need.

I “helped” teachers differentiate even more by showing them how to get articles that taught a specific standard but were written at different Lexiles. As I discussed here, more proficient readers were given texts that were written at or above grade level; however, less secure readers were given texts that were written at lower Lexiles so that they could be more successful practicing the targeted reading skill. Most students were seen in some capacity every day, but due to the number of things that teachers were supposed to accomplish during this time, groups couldn’t be seen for more than 15-20 minutes. This meant that many students spent the vast majority of their time in the literacy block completing seatwork. Not all seatwork is bad, and we can do things to make it meaningful, but I certainly wouldn’t advocate for my own children to have that much time away from the teacher every day.

I’ve already shared that trying to teach standards in isolation isn’t a good use of time, but to determine if I could’ve made this small-group time more effective, I’d like to consult the research. Unsurprisingly, the evidence is generally supportive of teaching students in small groups (e.g. Hall & Burns, 2018). This makes sense. Putting students into small groups allows teachers to intensify instruction while providing more targeted feedback to individual students. But the question that classroom teachers face is: Does teaching students in small groups for a part of the literacy block lead to more learning than teaching students in whole group for the entire duration of the literacy block? Let me explain what I mean there.

Most research on the topic explores if students learn more in a small group for a set amount of time than what they would learn in a whole-group setting for the same amount of time. For example, research might compare the effects of 20 minutes of small-group instruction to 20 minutes of whole-class instruction. But this isn’t a fair comparison for classroom teachers because I’m going to need rotations to meet with each small group whereas whole-group instruction allows me to teach everyone simultaneously. Let’s use my aforementioned literacy block as an example, providing each group with the same amount of time with the teacher.

In this 80-minute chunk of time, each group receives about 20 minutes with the teacher (slightly less when you consider rotating and getting started). If we didn’t have a literacy block, students would have 80 minutes with the teacher. Therefore, the research we use to determine if small groups are more effective than whole group shouldn’t compare 20 minutes to 20 minutes. In this example, it should compare the learning that takes place in 20 minutes of small-group time to the learning that takes place in 80 minutes of whole-group instruction. Spread out over just one week, the research should ask: Is spending 100 minutes with the teacher in a small group more effective than spending 400 minutes with the teacher as part of the whole group? We’ve known that answer for about 40 years now.

Sørensen and Hallinan (1986) compared the learning of students who were taught in small groups to those who received whole-group instruction and found, “The apparent result is that there is no effect of grouping on individual reading achievement” (p. 532). The researchers go on to say that, “students in grouped classes are exposed to fewer opportunities for learning than students in ungrouped classes” (p. 534), so while learning is intensified, they simply have fewer chances to learn. Perhaps the fewer opportunities to learn result from the teacher working more with the students who need the most support. I certainly made the recommendation to meet with the less secure students more frequently than those who were already proficient. Considering this, proponents of small-group instruction might say that small-group time is beneficial to help struggling readers catch up; however, this study also found “that more opportunities for learning exist in the high group than in lower level groups” (p. 539).

If the date on that study automatically makes it invalid, we can take a look at more recent research from Amendum et al. (2009) that examined the relationship between teachers’ preferred grouping style and overall student reading achievement as measured by their instructional reading level (IRL). This allows us to see if students with a high IRL spent more or less time in small groups. Their findings are summarized in the following table:

It should be noted that students with the lowest instructional reading levels in both first and second grade had teachers who used a lot, or a high amount, of small-group instruction. This stands in contrast to the amount of time students with higher IRLs spent in small groups.

Another factor to consider when discussing small groups is are students even in the right group? Many school districts rely on assessments such as MAP to group students, but as previously discussed, these groupings are likely not very accurate. Teachers are much better off using universal screeners such as DIBELS or those from Acadience in conjunction with more diagnostic assessments to group students together appropriately. Similarly, when teachers create groups to reteach individual standards, they are likely not addressing what caused students to struggle. Moving away from using data to inform instructional groups (which I can’t believe I just wrote), research has shown that students’ behavior can influence the groups in which they are placed (Condron, 2007; Haller, 1985) and that race, language proficiency, and SES status can also lead to incorrect group placements (Banerjee, 2019; Condron, 2007). Not only is accurate group placement important to ensure you’re teaching the right things, but the research suggests that students in high-ability groups receive greater levels of teacher support (Wang, King, & McInerney, 2021). This finding ran contrary to what I would have assumed, but it helps explain why students in high-ability groups have higher test scores than those in low-ability groups (Buttaro & Catsambis, 2019; Lleras & Rangel, 2009).

This time with teachers is only one factor to consider when examining the effectiveness of small-group time. Again, using my literacy block as an example, students could have around 60 minutes of daily seatwork. What’s the impact of that on students’ ability to read? If you’re familiar with the novice-expert continuum, the results of one study will not surprise you.

“Children with average to below-average reading comprehension skills in the fall achieved greater reading comprehension growth on average in classrooms with more time spent in teacher-managed explicit instruction and less in child-managed explicit instruction. In contrast, children with above-average reading comprehension skills in the fall achieved greater reading comprehension growth in classrooms with less time in teacher-managed explicit instruction and more in child-managed explicit instruction” (Connor, Morrison, & Petrella, 2004, p. 693).

In other words, proficient readers benefitted from seatwork while less secure readers did not.

To review, research has revealed that small-group instruction does not actually lead to more learning than whole-group instruction. It has also demonstrated that students may be placed in the wrong groups for a variety of reasons. This is highly problematic because students in high ability groups have more opportunities to learn and receive more teacher support, which eventually leads to them having higher test scores. Finally, in that time away from teachers, it’s the more secure readers who benefit the most. Every aspect of this construct benefits our readers who are already proficient. I largely supported this practice so that teachers could provide reteaching to our struggling readers. I wanted to create a time for them to catch up. And this is why using the research is so incredibly important. Relying a gut feeling or intuition or vibes led to me endorsing a practice that’s largely ineffective.

Daily small-group rotations may make us feel good. In the moment, we may feel that we’re doing a better job of addressing individual student needs, but the research suggests that this approach may be more likely to increase the achievement gap rather than reduce it. This is a huge issue considering that evidence suggests that about 90% of teachers use this structure (Scholastic Research & Validation, 2024). I understand that we cannot entirely eliminate small-group instruction. It is a necessary evil. But it should be treated as a tool rather than a time of day, and when it’s used, there are things we can do to make this time more effective. That will be the discussion of next week’s post.

References:

Amendum, S J., Li, Y., Hall, L. A., Fitzgerald, J., Creamer, K. H., Head- Reeves, D. M., & Hollingsworth, H. L. (2009). Which Reading Lesson Instruction Characteristics Matter for Early Reading Achievement? Reading Psychology, 30(2), 119–147.

Banerjee, N. (2019). Student–Teacher Ethno-Racial Matching and Reading Ability Group Placement in Early Grades. Education and Urban Society, 51(3), 395–422.

Buttaro, A., & Catsambis, S. (2019). Ability Grouping in the Early Grades: Long- Term Consequences for Educational Equity in the United States. Teachers College Record, 121(2), 1–50.

Condron, D. J. (2007). Stratification and Educational Sorting: Explaining Ascriptive Inequalities in Early Childhood Reading Group Placement. Social Problems, 54(1), 139–160.

Connor, C. M., Morrison, F. J., & Petrella, J. N. (2004). Effective Reading Comprehension Instruction: Examining Child X Instruction Interactions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(4), 682– 698

Hall, M. S., & Burns, M. K. (2018). Meta-analysis of targeted small-group reading interventions. Journal of School Psychology, 66(Complete), 54–66.

Haller, Emil J. (1985). Pupil Race and Elementary School Ability Grouping: Are Teachers Biased Against Black Children. American Educational Research Journal, 22(2), 465–483.

Lleras, C., & Rangel, C. (2009). Ability Grouping Practices in Elementary School and African American/Hispanic Achievement. American Journal of Education, 115(2), 279–304.

Scholastic Research & Validation. (2024). Aligning Practice with Research: Using Small Groups to Differentiate Instruction. Sarah W. Siegal, Colby Hall, & Michael P. Mesa. New York.

Sørensen, A. B., & Hallinan, M. T. (1986). Effects of ability grouping on growth in academic achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 23(4), 519–542.

Wang, H., King, R. B., & McInerney, D. M. (2023). Ability grouping and student performance: A longitudinal investigation of teacher support as a mediator and moderator. Research Papers in Education, 38(2), 121–142.