What do teachers need to teach in small groups?How do I organize them? When talking with teachers, the major reason I’ve heard as to why they do not pull small groups or struggle with them is how to “choreograph” them. Who goes where? How do I remember? Well, I have a solution for you!

I have had the pleasure of teaching with an amazing teacher at my last school and her name is Meghan Lake (she is the tall one on the left of both pictures). We taught several grade levels together, but the most memorable was when we both taught sixth grade. We both had taught sixth grade before at different schools, so we were both excited to teach this grade together.

These pictures were taken a few years ago at “Outdoor Ed”, a trip where we took our sixth graders to the mountains for four days. It was a memorable trip and really cemented an amazing friendship. We don’t teach in the same school any longer, but see each other and still collaborate often. I miss you, Meghan!

In the summer, prior to our first year of teaching sixth grade together, we decided to “self teach” ourselves Daily 5 by reading the book… by the pool. We started right away in the fall and quickly found that this way of teaching was definitely the way we wanted to teach our Language Arts curriculum ( and then this framework later continued into math). We were both really comfortable looking at assessment data and developing our groups, but we got stuck when it was time to figure out who goes where, until….. Meghan developed three documents that solved our problem!

Now, here’s the good news! Meghan has opened a new store on TPT and these three editable documents are free for you to use! Here’s her store and link:

The MOST fantastic news is that they are all EDITABLE so you can have total control over your own small group “choreography”. You can change to four or six groups if you like, or while one group is with the teacher, you can change around what the other groups are doing; you don’t have to stay with the plan that worked for sixth graders….. make it your own!

Thanks for looking!

Let me know what you think!

Carol

The Teacher Team