Small Group, Big Impact: Reading Instruction That Works For MLEs

All who are reading this blog know how critical reading is. And we all want our students to be successful, confident, happy readers. The more complicated question is: How do we achieve those goals? How do we create instructional reading experiences that influence multilingual learners of English(MLEs) to become successful, confident, and happy readers?

While there is no single answer to the question, we agree that one way to support MLEs as they become more proficient readers is through small groups.

What Are the Benefits of Small Groups for MLEs?

Small-group reading instruction offers a variety of benefits to language learners. In a small group, MLEs enjoy:

• • close proximity with their teacher and peers
  • greater opportunities for interaction with their teacher and peers
  • focused interaction tailored to their needs
  • a lower stress environment
  • a clearer view of the teacher’s eyes and mouth
  • proximity to each speaker to more readily hear the sounds and words spoken

A small group of anything is, well, more intimate. Think of going to watch your favorite band play. Would you rather see them in a football arena or a piano bar? Why? The answer may seem apparent when we explore it from our personal lives. The smaller venue may be more enjoyable because we can see the musician's eyes better when we are closer. We can hear the sounds straight from the instruments as opposed to coming from the speakers. We can even feel the energy that the musicians give off. Research on proximity aligns with the idea that the closer we are to the people we work with, the stronger our work will be.  So yes, proximity does matter.

Small-Group Reading Instruction in Elementary Classrooms

Small group time should be flexible and fun in elementary classrooms with young MLEs. Grouping should change based on need and never stay stagnant for long periods of time. Even young learners quickly pick up on groupings that are leveled and locked in permanently.

Small groups can consist of the following:

• • Strategy Lessons: These are lessons that focus on teaching reading strategies to groups of students who may be reading at different levels yet need support on the same reading strategy. Because not everyone in the class may need additional work on finding the theme or character traits, conducting a lesson with a small group is more efficient.
  • Shared Reading: During shared reading, you read aloud while the students follow along in the same text and read aloud at the same time. This approach builds fluency and invites students to read grade-level content in a low-stress environment.
  • Foundational Reading Skills: Using small groups to teach foundational skills can be especially useful for MLEs. In a small group, you can point out similarities and differences between MLEs’ home language and the new language.
  • Reading Conferences: Reading conferences are a form of small group, too. You can meet one-on-one with readers to listen to them read, take anecdotal notes, and ask questions. These small group opportunities help build a teacher-student relationship and inform future instruction.
  • Reteaching/Preteaching/Enrichment: You can use your observations from reading conferences and daily instruction to form small groups that either reteach, preteach, or enrich.
  • Language Development: A small group can be useful as we plan the intentional route for language development. When we know where students are linguistically, we are more likely to create a route to the intended destination. Thus, creating a small number of students with similar language needs can make good use of time and resources. This does not necessarily mean that the language development small group will always be the same. Students’ progress will vary and their language proficiency will also depend on factors such as motivation and background knowledge.

While you work with a small group, the rest of the class can work on various learning tasks. In primary grades, some teachers implement centers or rotations while gathering small groups. These are short and interesting learning activities that students move through tied to previously learned skills.

Small-Group Reading Instruction in Secondary Classrooms

Small-group reading instruction in secondary school usually occurs in two places. In the English language development class, it occurs during reading conferences or book club units, and in content classes, it usually occurs when the content teacher has assigned reading of a text to learn content. Regardless of where it happens, the goal of small-group reading instruction at the secondary level is to teach students how proficient readers process the text. Teaching this set of skills develops reading independence.

When facilitating small-group reading, your main tool is prompting. Prompting — and not just modeling a think aloud — stimulates interactions. The types of prompting that teachers can do include the following:

• • asking for noun-pronoun referencing
  • having students rearrange the sentence structure to make it more comprehensible
  • instructing students to pause at commas to identify the detail contained in the clause
  • flagging moments of the text for students to summarize segments
  • inviting students to make connections between ideas
  • having students notice text features of a nonfiction text
  • using cognates with students’ home languages for unfamiliar vocabulary words
  • making connections to grammatical concepts in students’ home languages

These prompts are transferable to any content area and text type. The most important thing to remember about prompting students during small-group reading instruction is to actively engage them to make meaning of the text by doing the same things proficient readers do to make the text accessible. After all, the goal of small-group reading instruction is not just to establish comprehensible input but to develop the reading skills needed for multilinguals to be independent, competent readers.

Conclusion

Although small group instruction is commonly seen in reading, it is useful cross-curricularly. You can use this time to gauge understanding, provide timely feedback, take anecdotal notes, and build stronger relationships with students. We didn’t learn overnight how to make small group instruction work for our students. We discovered that teaching happens in different ways — that sometimes whole group instruction works, and that sometimes our students need a smaller setting.