Speaker 1: Hey I'm Allison from Learning at the Primary Pond. I'm a literacy specialist and in this video I'm going to share with you my number one strategy for planning my small groups efficiently and quickly. Now if you use any type of reading small group instruction then you already know that planning those small groups can actually take up a lot of time, right? Like figuring out like what are you gonna work on with the kids? What are this specific group of kids? What does this group need? What kind of text are you gonna pull? It takes time to prepare all those materials but what I'm going to show you I promise will save you a ton of time. Before I get into it I want to remind you if you haven't subscribed and also hit the little bell to be notified about when I post a new video make sure to do that now because that way you won't miss any of the videos that I post about teaching literacy in K2. Okay so as I said small group instruction can take a really long time to plan especially we're talking about reading small groups which is what we're talking about today and at the same time even though you might spend all this time planning for it when it actually comes to teaching it those small group minutes fly by. I'm curious and I would love for you to let me know in the comments how many minutes do you spend with each of your reading small groups? So do you spend 10? Do you spend 15? Do you spend 20? Do you spend less? I'm just curious because I know from my personal experience both in the classroom and as a reading specialist and from talking to so many other teachers often we're really limited in those minutes that we have so I would love for you to just share how many minutes you have with your kiddos. So it's sort of like a weird thing where they take forever to plan but those minutes actually go quickly. That means that we have to be really intentional right? Those small group moments are precious we do have to go in with a very good plan but I promise you don't have to spend hours each week making your plan. The number one thing that has helped me both as a classroom teacher and being a reading specialist literally in some jobs my day was just like group after group after group after group and it didn't take me forever because I did this one thing and that one thing is to have like a bank of activities and teaching points to pull from. So let me show you what I mean. Here I have my small group binder and what's inside I actually prepared for my literacy club members so I have a kindergarten literacy club and first and second grade literacy club. I will talk more later on about what those are but I kind of want to show you what's in here because this is a perfect example of how you can have a bank of materials to pull from for your lessons. What I made for our literacy club members is just a small group guide. You can make this on your own for sure it does take a really long time so if you're a literacy club member or plan to become a literacy club member you have this in your materials so you don't need to reinvent the wheel. But anyway what I did is I have like a sheet for different levels so I have different options like AA, pre-readers, BR, A1 so I have different leveling systems but I also provided like okay what types of words are they working on digraphs and blends so that really no matter what kind of system you use to group your kids you're gonna have something to go on. So each sheet what it has here is the different parts of the lesson that I usually do. I've got like a warm-up or fluency items, new text introduction, new text reading and discussion, and then any follow-up phonics, phonological awareness, and writing activities. So it's it's broken down into those four categories and then what you do is you pull from the things that are ideal for that group of students. So like for example warm-up and fluency items. At the pre-reader level it's gonna be things like reading an alphabet chart, A apple app, B book, things like that right. I have different like rhyming games, you know ways of practicing letter sounds, just different options for you. So when you're making your lesson plan all you do is pull from either this bank or if you I'm calling it a bank but I just mean like a group of things that you might do with your students. So whether you use this one or whether you create your own you just pull something from this list that works best for this group of students. So simple right. That way you're not spending that thinking time of oh my gosh what could I do to practice this what could I do to practice that. You just pull one and you're done. Next up we have the new text introduction. So you know this could be something like making a prediction. At these levels it's like model blending. Now when you get into later levels of course all of this stuff changes. You know for warm-up and fluency items which we talked about first it could be just that the kids are rereading familiar texts and you listen to one child read and then in the new and new text introduction maybe you're breaking apart one or two multi-syllabic words. So even though the components like the main parts of the lesson plan are the same what you're doing at the different levels is what is different on each page. So you just turn to the page that matches the level of your students you pull what you need and then you make your lesson plan. I mean you know you gotta grab a book but it literally takes just a couple of minutes when you have something like this to pull from. So again in the new text introduction it could be modeling blending modeling pointing one-to-one but this gives you guidance on what to you know model or do with your students. Next up is the new text reading and discussion. So you know having the kids retell the text there's different types of questions that you can pull from to ask them and then a teaching point. So you know at the at the pre-reader level concept of word let's count the number of words on this page one word two words three words. Now obviously if you get into like we'll do like a second grade level that's not what you're doing right? At a second grade level you might be doing things like teaching them how to try a different vowel sound if the first one didn't work or monitoring your reading if you didn't understand go back and reread. So it's really tailored to the level of the kiddos. And then the last section here has a bunch of phonics phonological awareness and writing activities. And these are pretty simple things they don't usually require a lot of materials but again you just pull one maybe two if you have time and then you stick it in your lesson plan. So in addition to all this these this guide has you know like suggest a number of minutes for each part and it does vary right? Because like with your pre-readers it's still a lot of like phonics and beginning print work whereas your older kids are gonna spend more time actually reading the text. So this has been a game-changer for me just having something like this and then when I go to my go to plan my lessons I literally just pull from this guide and then we're good to go. So whether you use the Literacy Club one which is done for you or whether you create your own having this will save you an incredible amount of time because you're not trying to reinvent the wheel. So just either put yours from the Literacy Club or make your own put it in a binder. I promise it will make planning your lessons so much quicker. Alright so I hope this idea was helpful. I did promise I would tell you a little bit about the Kindergarten Literacy Club and First and Second Grade Literacy Club. This resource is one of like hundreds that you get when you become a club member. We do only open up the clubs to accept new members a couple of times of year so in this video I'll include links so you can join the waitlist so that you just get an email notifying you when you are able to join the clubs. But our club members get this stuff they get brand new literacy teaching materials each month so in addition to this to help plan small group lessons they actually already get a bunch of small group lessons done for them. So what I recommend is that our club members use all the materials they give that we give them and then plan any additional lessons that they need for the month using this guide. So they save a ton of time between the guide and then also you know they get printable text, they get lesson plans, they get word work activities, they get all kinds of stuff to go with it. Then they also get centers or independent activities that the other kids can do while you're pulling your small groups because I know exactly how long it can take to plan all of your small group lessons and then all of your centers like that block of time in the classroom goes by so quickly but it can take so much time to plan for. So the literacy clubs are really geared toward giving you new materials on a monthly basis and then equipping you to just plan your literacy block I would say in two hours or less per week which is a lovely thing because literacy is only one piece of the puzzle. There's all the other subjects that you probably have to plan for as well. So lots of goodies in the literacy club including this small group guide. Get on the wait list if we're not open now for new members. We usually open up in January and July twice a year so definitely get on the wait list so you don't miss out. If you have any questions please feel free to let me know. Curious if you think this would be helpful. Thanks so much for watching this video. I do hope to see you in the literacy clubs if you're not already a member. Make sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and I will see you in the next video.