WHAT IS SMALL-GROUP DIFFERENTIATED LITERACY INSTRUCTION?
During small-group differentiated instruction, a teacher typically works with a select number of students to address learning needs, behavioral characteristics, or topics of interest they have in common. Sometimes, a teacher will work with a subset of students with heterogeneous learning needs, motivational characteristics, or topics of interest with the goal of giving some students the opportunity to be models or teachers and other students opportunities to learn—but with the goal of differentiating instruction to stretch and maximize growth for all students. It is important to note that small-group instruction facilitates both productive learning experiences and time to practice skills for all students in the classroom, not just those meeting directly with the teacher in a small group. As a result, when we describe recommendations for small-group instruction, we focus not only on the instructional time when students are working directly with the teacher but also on considerations that allow students to make effective use of their time when they are working more independently. There are reasons to group students during instruction that do not serve the purpose of differentiation. For example, dividing students into peer-led small groups can facilitate increased independence for students who are practicing a set of newly learned skills (e.g., in Collaborative Strategic Reading groups; Boardman et al., 2016) but does not necessarily involve differentiation of instruction. Alternatively, a teacher might pull a small group for the purpose of demonstrating something that can only be demonstrated up close (e.g., place and manner of articulating phonemes) or to ensure that students are paying close attention and experiencing more opportunities to respond and more accountability for engaging with learning and practice (Shanahan, 2018). In this paper, we do not seek to describe all the reasons to group students during instruction. Instead, we focus on grouping to differentiate instruction. In addition, although supplemental instruction (e.g., Tier 2 or Tier 3 intervention) for students with learning difficulties is often provided in a small-group format (see Table 1), there is substantial evidence supporting the use of small groups to differentiate instruction in the general education classroom (i.e., during Tier 1 instruction) as well (Conradi Smith et al., 2022; Puzio et al., 2020; Connor et al., 2013).
ALIGNING PRACTICE WITH RESEARCH TOPIC PAPER 2
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