Why I Scrapped Reading Groups and What Happened Next

what I scrapped reading groups and what happened next

I have always grouped students for reading groups (like, forever) and I believe the majority of teachers do this.

There is research that says that levelled group reading does not work. Yet, I never ran a reading class without them. Last year, I started to wonder why. I was overwhelmed by my workload, and some things were starting to bother me:

Amount of planning required (providing 5 different, differentiated activities for instance)
Lower level texts are not a scaffold – you are simply teaching to a lower level
Grouping by reading levels doesn’t tell us anything about what the student actually needs to learn
There is evidence that lower-level readers remain at a low level
There isn’t a great deal of evidence that grouping according to reading level actually works
Our assessment is at a grade level – how are my low students being prepared for this test?
My students collectively learned more when I taught them as a whole class

I got to the point where my groups were taking up the majority of my planning, and if a fire drill (or other unexpected event) meant we missed a rotation, I struggled to find time to make up the rotation.

In frustration, one week I just decided to teach reading as a whole class instead of rotations.

What I found during those lessons, was that my students made greater gains, and were more engaged. I tracked this through reading fluency, comprehension results, and anecdotal records.

I was applying the same strategy that I use with my Bump It Up Walls and Learning Walls – teaching up to the ‘A’ , setting goals and giving feedback – and my students responded.

My workload was less and I was happier. The transition was easy, and I decided that I wasn’t going to reintroduce reading groups.

I read more and more about high-impact teaching strategies and the most recent research on reading, and found that I am not alone in moving away from guided reading groups, for the sake of running guided reading. The cost/benefit just isn’t there.

So how do I organise reading now?

Whole class reading instruction using grade-level comprehension texts. I differentiate these sessions in multiple ways (visual aides, repetition, levelled questioning – BUT never levelled texts)
Paired reading according to coding ability.
I choose focus students that I will hear read that day (could be during the lesson or during stamina reading) and have small group teaching while the class is completing other tasks.
I use a guided reading structure; book walk, predictions, tricky words and unfamiliar vocabulary; modelled reading, independent reading, listening to my focus students read while taking anecdotal notes; finishing with a mini lesson that debugs any misconceptions/ recaps any skills.
We annotate a paper version of our text, highlighting tricky words, writing notes and questions.
Weekly comprehension check-ins. I like to use Cars and Stars, and I record every single answer in a spreadsheet, so I can see strategies my whole class needs, as well as individual needs. Initially I target easier skills if needed (eg main idea) to backfill my students’ toolkit, before moving on to the harder strategies such as comparing and contrasting. My students love looking at the spreadsheet to see how they have grown over the term.
I choose varied texts to help students build their background knowledge, which helps with comprehension (How are you going to understand a text about snowboarding when you haven’t even SEEN snow?)

I have been doing this for most of my in-class time during 2020/2021 (interrupted somewhat by Covid-19), and it has had lots of benefits – some unexpected:

I am much more relaxed about finding appropriate texts. Most of the time, I take texts from other learning areas, or scan a page from our class book.
Selecting texts from other learning areas improves student comprehension and their understanding of the other learning areas – winning!
When I teach with one text, my natural teacher skills come out, and we have much more fun in our lessons. I use the silly voices, I stomp and wave my arms. I get side-tracked and tell stories to help students make connections. I don’t look at the timer all the time or stress over being interrupted.
It is easier to reference a teachable moment later in the week, and the whole class can make the connection – not just one group.
My lower students are much more confident
My class is also more relaxed. Transitions and group work can actually be quite stressful for students.

I am feeling refreshed and my workload has decreased. My students are still achieving, and actually being better prepared for our year-level assessments.

It’s amazing how we can be stuck in our ways and find it hard to change our beliefs, but I have learned that it is amazing what we can achieve when we change our perspective.

Is there something in your workload that is niggling you? What can you do to change your practices in a way that student achievement stays the same, or even increases?

Co-constructing Texts with your Students

Do you ever attempt the assessment pieces that your students need to complete? It can be a really hard thing to do! This is why co-constructing texts with your class is an important learning step.

It’s also very powerful. Co-constructing the assessment to an ‘A’ level (or even from a C to a B) can help students to understand all of the elements that your students will need to succeed – maybe they are going to need specific vocabulary on their Learning Wall, or maybe they are going to need to improve their adverbial phrases.

Co-constructing helps you to understand what your students need to know, and safely allows them to identify what they need to learn.

It can give you clarity on what really needs to be taught (and re-taught), and help your students to understand the task more clearly.

Co-constructing texts with your students

Co-constructing texts with your students is a very important part of using Bump It Up Walls and Learning Walls. We talk a lot about co-constructed success criteria, but co-constructing texts is hugely important for your classroom. Worked examples (like the examples – co-constructed or not – on our Bump It Up Walls) are one way that students create schemas and reduce the cognitive load of assessment tasks.

How do I co-construct texts in my classroom?

Before writing, students need to be exposed to multiple examples, know WAGOLL (what a good one looks like), and have clear, identified success criteria to refer back to while co-constructing.

1. Immerse in the genre over a week or two

I like to start by engaging my class with a range of different examples of the text genre. For example, if we are writing procedural texts, we look at a range including recipes, how-to manuals, YouTube videos, directions, etc.

I have a range for explicit teaching and modeling, a range for our classroom bookshelf, and copies to display on our Learning Wall.

I also like to take poster-size photocopies of texts so we can annotate them and add them to our wall.

2. Modelled reading/annotating/notetaking

Deconstruct, compare, and annotate different examples. Model thinking aloud as you read the texts to your class “Here’s the title”, “Oh, here they have used sequencing words”, making note of the elements you notice in the text.

Choose structural features to highlight. You can also highlight language features (eg command verbs) and write a list of these, color-coding them as you go (eg green for verbs).

3. Brainstorm – what does a good one look like?

As a class, we brainstorm elements that make a good text example. Display a text, or provide students with a copy of a text – what do we notice?

A-ha! We have some success criteria! How can we organize these? Check them against your marking guide. Add them to your Learning Wall.

4. Co-constructing: Use Success Criteria to model how to co-construct an ‘A’ sample

When writing, make sure the learning intention and success criteria are clearly displayed. Be clear about the topic (this should not be your assessment topic).

I like to co-construct texts on my laptop, and on the projector so that students can view the text as we write and I can make changes as we go. Some teachers like to do this with butcher paper and colored markers. You can even do it on your whiteboard with a dry-erase pen, and take a photo on your phone to project later.

Encourage students to make suggestions, debate on changes, and have input into the text. Make improvements, edit, and refer to the success criteria to ensure the text is meeting the success criteria for an ‘A’.

Remember, the intention is to teach students where to focus their attention when writing their text.

Clearly cover text structure, language features, grammar, and punctuation – whatever your marking guide is assessing. If spelling isn’t being assessed, don’t make it a big focus of your modeling.

Learn through doing

Both you and your students learn through this process.

Being a ‘learner’ you identify where students need skills and knowledge and where you may need to reteach or teach differently. You also understand what students need to do and how much effort is going to be required of them.

Your students learn through watching you ‘do’. Listening to your thought processes, watching you interact with the learning wall/bump it up wall, cross-checking, and making mistakes.

Co-constructing texts is a teaching and learning activity that can have a huge impact in your classroom – I encourage you to give it a go!

Are you too time-poor to create your own samples and displays?

Why not try our collection of done-for-you exemplars and displays. Access all of our resources with our year-long subscription.

How to save time lesson planning

If you haven’t asked yourself how to save time on lesson planning, are you even a teacher?!

Besides teaching our students, planning is probably the most time-consuming activity we undertake every week. Looking through our curriculum, or unit plan; planning a sequence, then your individual lessons. Differentiating for individual needs. Then there is resourcing the manipulatives, props, digital tools, and printed worksheets that you need – it is a huge job.

Worse still – we do most of it in our own time!

What disorganized planning looks like…(this is going to be REALLY familiar)

I used to be the teacher driving to school stressed and mentally recapping my to-do list. I was guilty of the following:

Preparing lessons at 7.30 am in the morning
Visiting the resource library on the way to a lesson
Printing worksheets in the break before a lesson (and missing your chance because someone else was there!)
Being caught by a parent in the schoolyard and missing vital prep.
Spending half of Sunday ‘preparing for school’
Not leaving school until 5 pm in the afternoon

Once, I even walked my students up to the administration building during class time to wait while I printed worksheets. Well, wouldn’t you know it – THE PRINCIPAL walked past! Luckily they exclaimed how wonderfully my class was lining up (and not asking why they were there in an out-of-bounds area!)

What do you want your day to look like?

I KNEW that I didn’t want to be at work at 7.30 am or long after the bell at the end of the day. I wanted to be exercising or at home with my family during that time instead. Work/life balance or lack thereof is the fast track to teacher burnout!

Secondly, I wanted to be focusing on what really matters. The BIG ROCKS – reading, spelling and phonological awareness, writing, and maths. I wanted assessment-focused teaching and learning that was going to set my students up for success.

What do YOU want your school days to look like? Would you like an extra 20 minutes at home? You can do it!

What does organized planning look like?

Well-organized planning is:

Time-limited – set a time amount that you are willing to spend getting ready for your week. For me, that time period is two hours at the beginning of the term, and then two hours for each week. When I focus on the BIG ROCKS, this is plenty of time.
Done at school.
Well-resourced with a range of teacher and student resources
Details are in ONE place and easy to share with a substitute teacher
Ready at the beginning of the week, for the whole week. I like to have my planning completed by Friday for the coming week. This frees up my mind over the weekend so I can truly relax.

So you can:

Deliver well-targeted lessons that are putting your students on the path to success
Get to school later and enjoy more time at home with your family/exercising/stopping for your favorite coffee on the way to work
Walk straight past the photocopier every morning
Come into your classroom, plug in, and get started
Call in sick and send off your daily plan within 5 minutes – no need to spend an hour coughing and spluttering over your email because you had no idea what you were going to teach that day
Go home when the bell rings to live your life outside of teaching!

So, here are my tips:

1. Begin with your assessment

Get your unit plans and focus on the ‘big rocks’ – your Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

2. Create systems including a Resource Bank

This is the most important step of your planning. It sets you up for seamless weekly planning and keeps you away from the photocopier during the week. You will need to be generally well organized, but also focused on your current units of work.

No. 1 & 2 are completed at the beginning of your units before you do any weekly/daily planning.

3. Plan a week ahead

Things that influence how I plan:

I backward map from assessment, determining what students will need to be able to know and do, and I focus on those ‘big rocks’
I plan two weeks in advance before school begins, and one week in advance during term time.
I give myself two hours max. The first hour is used to write my planning into my template; the second hour is used to print and collate all of my resources.
I like to have the same lesson sequence each day. I’m a primary school teacher so this is easy for me to do, and I find it helps to create a calm classroom and manage behavior beautifully. It also helps me plan easily when I am planning for the same activities each day. If I have a specialist lesson during the day, I will leave the afternoon planning blank to catch up on Maths and English so I don’t have to back-track.
When I am consistent, my students also know what to expect. When my students know me and my classroom, it becomes easy for me to find quiet time to reply to an email or mark some student work during class time. If I don’t have enough time during class time, I will work through my lunch break so that I can still go home soon after the school bell.

Here is an example of my daily plan:

You’ll notice that I don’t use a timetable-style planner.
I DO keep a timetable master – just one page and synchronize important times with alarms on my phone, so I don’t forget anything BUT I keep those things separate from my planning.

4. Organise and complete your weekly planner (1 hour)

You already know WHAT you are teaching and the resources you have available. Use your overview planning and resource bank to map out your teaching sequence. For instance, if you need to address seven Success Criteria in your English, you should aim to cover two of these each week.

5. Putting it together

When you have completed your daily plans, for example, Monday-Friday, create your slideshow for the week.

I like to add a slide for each subject area and include my links (easy to grab from your daily plan) and screenshots of worksheets or texts. This really saves me on photocopying!

I often duplicate slides, such as spelling or reading if I am using the same words or text throughout the week. Then all I have to do is modify the activity. Easy!

6. Back up, print, organize

Make sure you have saved your planning, print the resources you need, and organize everything in one spot in your classroom.

Whew!

I don’t believe that teachers should spend their weekends, mornings, and afternoons planning. After all, we are professionals and have the capability to run a class with no prep whatsoever (Have you seen us at a birthday party? LOL).

So take back your time, have confidence in your abilities, and don’t take that planning home!

Ready to get started with my step-by-step guide and templates?

You will receive

printable templates to build your own paper planner.
digital templates for digital planning
slideshow templates for your in-class lessons.
how-to document to walk you through your beginning of term and daily planning
planning that is focused on Learning Intentions and Success Criteria (the critical part of your job)

Teachie Tings Time-Saving Planner

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Time-Saving Tips for Teachers

Time is GOLD for teachers. Which is why time-saving tips for teachers are one of the most important things you need to know right now!

I am unapologetic about protecting my own time and my teaching time, from ‘gravel’ that takes me away from my main job – ensuring that my students can meet benchmarks and succeed in their assessment.

I like to focus on BIG ROCKS. What are big rocks, I hear you say?

They are the important tasks that teachers need to complete:

Planning for student achievement and learning
Resourcing their classroom and lessons with fresh, exciting, and purposeful texts and materials
Knowing their students and what they need to ‘bump up’ to the next level
Maintaining student data, assessment and reporting
Communicating with colleagues, stakeholders and parents
Maintain their duty of care when on school grounds

That’s it.

Here are some time-suck tasks that teachers get drawn into:

Marking all student work (teach them how to do this themselves and for each other, using checklists and learning walls)
Gossiping in the staff room at lunch and then staying back after work to complete important tasks
Reading email on the run and then again when they have time (read it at set times during the day and allow time to respond)
Low-impact activities such as weekly spelling tests, group rotations with filler tasks and disordered transitions
Completing tasks for parents, such as tracking student behaviour on an ‘at home sheet’, as well as your own behaviour system (just nope!)
Heating up student lunches, retrieving student lunches from fridges (Are you willing to do this for all 30 of your students? Just say no)

You may think that I am being hard or difficult, but it really is ok to say no!

You already have hundreds of tasks to complete each day.

That said, you are definitely going to take time to soothe a child and put a band-aid on their knee, call the office to organise a lost lunch and let a parent know that their child’s friendship issues are continuing – and what you can do to help.

HOW TO SAY ‘NO”

You don’t have to be cold-hearted to be a time-effective teacher (and avoid burn-out!), BUT you do have to know how to respectfully say no. You could say:

“That sounds like a great idea, but unfortunately I don’t have time for that this week/term/year. Good luck! I hope it’s a great success.”

“I’m sorry but I have family commitments after school that day”

“I’m afraid I have already committed to gymnastics club and origami club. Along with reporting this term I just don’t have any more free time”

THE KEY THING TO REMEMBER

EVERYTHING you do as a teacher takes time. You are only paid for your actual teaching time – everything else is GOLD. YOUR GOLD. Make sure you’re not giving it up easily.

Ask yourself – Is this addressing one of my BIG ROCKS? If the answer is no, do you have the time and energy to commit to the task?

Finally, are you your worst enemy?

Are you inviting parents to reply to your email (and answering 25 emails) when you could send a survey?

Are you spending time printing and marking materials for a task, when you could easily complete the same task on mini-whiteboards while taking anecdotal notes on just 5 students?

Simplify my friend! You are not paid to plan before and after school. You are not paid to plan on your weekends or on your holidays – that time is yours to reset and recover!

Protect your time carefully – save these 30 time-saving tips for teachers to refer back to when you’re feeling overwhelmed x