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What Are You Grouping For?, Grades 3-8
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What Are You Grouping For?, Grades 3-8
How to Guide Small Groups Based on Readers - Not the Book

Foreword by Mary Howard

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August 2018 | 352 pages | Corwin

Bring out daring readers with dynamic small groups!

Like many educators in intermediate classrooms across the country, you may be using guided reading principles to teach reading. Whether you’re following targeted reading levels or sticking with your school’s established routines, chances are that guided reading has become synonymous with small group reading for you and your students. But . . . are your students getting the most out of small groups? Are readers of all ability levels experiencing the dynamic learning that can occur in small groups? Do you feel confident that the way you’re grouping kids is based on their wants and needs?

Intermediate grade readers don’t need to be guided as much as they need to be engaged—and authors Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan have solutions for doing just that using small groups. What Are You Grouping For? offers the practical tools, classroom examples, and actionable steps essential for starting, sustaining, and mastering the management of small groups. This book explains the five teacher moves that work together to support students’ reading independence through small group learning—kidwatching, pivoting, assessing, curating, and planning—and provides examples to guide you and your students toward success. 

From must-have beginning-of-the-year strategies to step-by-step advice for implementation, this guide breaks down the processes that support small groups and help create effective instructional reading programs. Based on more than 45 years of combined experience in the classroom, this resource will empower you with tools to ensure that your readers are doing the reading, thinking, and doing—not you


 
Foreword by Mary Howard
 
Acknowledgments
 
Preface
 
CHAPTER 1. A New Way of Thinking About Small Group Learning Experiences (because being up close to students is what drives discovery)
Small Group Instruction Redefined

 
The Five Teacher Moves

 
Combating the Challenges So You Can Do the Five Moves

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 2. The Launch (because who doesn’t need beginning-of-the-year strategies)
Small Groups Defined

 
Two Essential Questions This Chapter Helps You Answer

 
Beliefs

 
Ideas for the First Days of School

 
Listening In and Joining In

 
A Few Weeks Into the School Year

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 3. Scheduling (because schedules are key for the launch and beyond)
Reading Workshop: Daily Plans for Groups

 
Getting Started, Quick Groups

 
Groups for First Days/Weeks of School

 
Groups That Might Meet Across the Year

 
Small Group Foundational Q&A

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 4. Kidwatching 2.0 (because it’s all about orient, notice, take stock, and inquire)
Two Essential Questions This Chapter Helps You Answer

 
Beliefs

 
Our Kidwatching 2.0 Protocol

 
Tips for Getting Started

 
Using Your Notes to Form Small Groups

 
Four-Step Process for Going From Kidwatching to Small Group

 
Example of Small Group Work Based on Kidwatching Data

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 5. Pivoting Into Flexible Groups (because it’s the teacher moves that keep readers moving forward)
Two Essential Questions This Chapter Helps You Answer

 
Beliefs

 
How This Chapter Is Organized

 
The List of Reasons for Pivoting

 
The Teacher’s Role

 
Types of Groups to Pivot Into and Out Of

 
Timing Is Everything: More About the Duration of Groups

 
Language for Joining In

 
Troubleshooting

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 6. Assessing Student Work (because looking at our readers’ work lifts their strategies, skills, and thinking)
Two Essential Questions This Chapter Helps You Answer

 
Beliefs

 
Assessing With Learner-Centered Benchmarks

 
What to Look At

 
How to Sort Student Work

 
Planning a Focus for Instruction and Putting It Into Action

 
More Examples of How to Use Work to Inform Grouping Decisions

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 7. Curating (because selecting the right texts inspires readers to be connoisseurs)
Two Essential Questions This Chapter Helps You Answer

 
Beliefs

 
Teachers and Students as Curators

 
Teachers as Curators

 
Steps for Curating

 
Zooming In on Step 2: Curate and Select

 
Zooming In on Step 3: Decide

 
Steps 4–7: Spark, Read and Construct Meaning, and Reflect

 
Students as Curators

 
Exemplars of Students as Curators

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 8. Unit Planning (because small groups are best anchored in a harbor of big ideas)
Two Essential Questions Chapters Eight and Nine Help You Answer

 
Beliefs

 
Planning: The Reality Show

 
Six Surefire Steps

 
One Last Thing

 
 
CHAPTER 9. Weekly and Daily Planning (because weekly and daily plans chart the course for small group experiences)
Creating a Calendar for Weekly and Daily Lesson Planning

 
Zooming In on Step 5: Make Plans for Small Group Learning Opportunities

 
Some Popular, Proven Models to Guide You

 
Barry’s Planning Process for Hosting Two Groups

 
Julie’s One-Week Plan of Lessons for Launching a Unit

 
Student-Driven Planning

 
Putting It Into Practice: Examples From Our Classrooms

 
One Last Thing

 
 
Conclusion
 
Appendix: Ready-to-Copy Teacher and Student Reflection/Planning Pages
 
References and Further Reading
 
Index
 
About the Authors

Supplements

“A few years back, after visiting Barry Hoonan’s classroom and experiencing his teaching and his students’ learning, I looked squarely into his reflective eyes and said, ‘Please write a book about what I just saw.’ Educators, welcome to Barry and Julie’s classrooms. Their most important thinking and learning has been poured into this book for us, the virtual visitors to their rooms. They invite us into their joy-filled classrooms, engaging us as their colleagues. We learn alongside them by listening in to their conversations with their students, and kidwatch by joining in their thinking and discovering students’ next steps. We lean into their questions and inquiry as the authors share their reverence for teaching, respect of all students, and above all, how we are doing this together because ‘exquisite things that happen when we are inquisitive together.’”

Gail Boushey
Co-Author of The Daily 5: Fostering Literacy Independence in the Elementary Grades and Co-Founder of The Daily Café

“ This book is a fresh reminder that the best teaching is responsive—that kids are much more likely to flourish when they have a teacher whose primary focus is on teaching students rather than on teaching stuff. Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan effectively argue that the one of the best ways to be responsive to your students is through small-group learning experiences, and the five teacher moves they outline in this book—kidwatching, pivoting, assessing, curating, and planning—are moves that should be woven through all K–12 classrooms. I highly recommend this book.”

Kelly Gallagher
Teacher and Author of Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It and Write Like This

“ In this nimble and invigorating profile of small group settings, Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan offer practical tools and actionable steps that lift small group instruction from a static focus on reading levels to one of setting learning in motion. They outline five critical teacher moves—kidwatching, pivoting, assessing, curating, and planning—that work together to help teachers take a flexible stance while elevating learner responsibility.”

Linda Hoyt
Author of Revisit, Reflect, Retell: Time-Tested Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension

“ The authors reframe, redefine, and refresh the notion of small group reading instruction. In doing so, they remind us that small group instruction is not only for our ‘struggling’ students, but rather that it’s about leaning in and meeting all students where they are so that we can move them forward. This gem of a book includes strategies for engaging students as readers, encouraging voluminous reading, and finding joy in our reading instruction. It’s a must-read for any elementary teacher of reading.”

Diane Sweeney
Author of Student-Centered Coaching: The Moves

“ Wherever I go, teachers ask me about small group instruction and how to do it. At last, there is book with systems and structures that make small group instruction manageable and meaningful. Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan provide lots of examples to show how to honor and meet the individual needs of students.”

Cris Tovani
Teacher, Author of I Read It, But I Don’t Get It and Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, and Instructional Coach

“ These teaching moves are just what I needed to refine my flexibility and problem-solving sophistication in small group instruction. The strategies and examples read as the encouraging voices of the authors over my shoulder, grounded in powerful beliefs, inspiring me to open up my classroom practices in the quest for empowering and joyful student-centered learning. With specific, easily implementable steps to bridge the gap between the formula of best practices in differentiation and the heart and soul of giving each student what they need today for powerful learning, this book is an essential handbook for new and experienced teachers.”

Shelley Hays
Upper Arlington City Schools

“ For anyone who is looking to lift small group instruction to make it more meaningful, efficient, and joyful, this book is for you. Whether you are someone who is just embarking on utilizing small groups or are looking to breathe new life into this structure, the authors hold your hand and walk you through innovative, practical, and student-centered approaches to reading instruction. Because of this book, there is no longer just one way to hold a guided reading group or a coach book club. The roles a teacher can assume are now dynamic and flexible within small groups and the authors show us how to customize instruction with confidence and insight, adjusting for the readers in front of us. This book is the next generation of small group instruction.”

Patty McGee
Author of Feedback That Moves Writers Forward

“ Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan’s insistence on JOY at the heart of every instructional decision ensures that a teacher’s focus is not on the structure, but on each child—what they know, what they can do, and what they need next to grow—which is as it should be. One of my favorite lines is, ‘Students’ curiosity and interests are more trustworthy and energizing drivers of grouping decisions than anything else.’ What Are You Grouping For? will energize YOU as you plan worthy work for your students and focus on compelling reasons for them to read, write, and talk. Trust Julie and Barry when they say in the first pages, ‘Together, we’ll figure it out.’ Thanks, Julie and Barry, for being our wing-people. Kids need us to work together and model courageous risk taking in our classrooms. Together is the best way forward.”

Samantha Bennett
Author of That Workshop Book

“ It’s pretty rare these days to find a book that fills both our minds and our pockets. But Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan’s What Are You Grouping For? does just that. It meets us exactly where we are as teachers, with all our questions and concerns, about time and organization and materials and strategies, and helps us not only understand what’s possible, but how to enact it too. This is the book to keep in our laps as we teach. Thank you, Barry and Julie!”

Donna Santman
Middle school English Teacher, New York City; Author of That Workshop Book

“ Barry and Julie have produced a must-read book for teachers of reading. This work is a practical guide to the use of small group instruction as a means of improving reading skills. These two master teachers provide clear, focused techniques from their own practice while making a case for ‘less is more’ relative to taking on too many initiatives in schools. This is thoughtful and provocative.”

Allan Bredy
American School of Brasilia, Brazil

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