Small Group Ideas for Pre-K to Second Grade Classrooms
Small Group Ideas for Pre-K to Second Grade Classrooms
When I think back to my 12 years of teaching kindergarten, my 4 sessions per day of meeting with my small groups always took me longest to plan out. I didn’t want to do the exact same activity every day although a certain skill may need several days of repetition and every group may not be working on the same skill.
But before thinking about specific activities, I first needed to decide what skills each of the groups needed reinforcement or enrichment in. For this information I would use daily, monthly, and quarterly data I was required to connect anyway. For our school, at the time, the major focus for our grade level was on phonemic awareness and phonics skills, but you can tailor your small group time to whatever subject area or skill your school may be focused on or based on the needs in your classroom.
In my small groups, I mainly focused on the following:
DIBELS skills- Identifying beginning sounds, letter naming, naming all the sounds in a word, and reading consonant-vowel-consonant words. (DIBELS is an assessment that can be given to students pre-k-6 grade students that assessing early literacy skills)
Phonemic awareness skills: rhyming, syllables, onset/rime (c…at), blending and segmenting the sounds in a word
Phonics skills- attaching sounds to letters (identifying beginning sounds, ending sounds, middle short/long vowel sounds, writing and reading CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant words i.e cat, hen, pig)
Reading comprehension skills : Listening comprehension as well as basic reading comprehension (reading a story or listening to one with many pictures and answering questions based on the words and pictures.)
Writing- writing sight words taught, writing letters taught, writing short sentences, writing CVC words
Here are some ideas, suggestions, and resources for each of the areas of focus for your small group centers:
DIBELS skills- For identifying beginning sounds, use picture cards and have students touch the picture beginning with the sound you say or have them name the beginning sound of the picture you point to.
For letter naming, create a sheet that looks much like the sheet from the test and have students name as many letters as they can in 20 seconds. For letter recognition practice, take 4 or 5 letters have students try to touch the upper or lower case letter you name, have them name the letter you touch, and have them practice writing the letter on dry erase boards, preferably with writing lines on them, while saying the letter name.
For naming all sounds in a word- students should first practice naming the beginning sound then the rest of the sounds (onset/rime ; /c/ /at/) There are many ways to have them practice this ( extend arm, touch shoulder area while saying the beginning sound then sliding your hand down the rest of your arm for the rest of the sounds in the word, students touching elkonin boxes **ctrl and click on link (one small box, one longer box) for beginning sound and the rest of the sounds. For identifying words with three or more sounds, you could use elkonin boxes again in many ways (putting a yellow/red math chip in each box for each sound, using a bingo stamper to stamp out sounds) I’ve use egg cartons and have students put blocks in each part for each sound they hear.
For reading consonant-vowel-consonant words- show the students a word and then show them pictures and they have to pick the picture that matches the word, show students a picture of a CVC word (hat, pot) and having students write the word.
Phonemic awareness skills: Matching pictures that rhyme, naming pictures and clapping out syllables, you say sounds and students pick picture that makes the word, you say word and students tell you the sound
Phonics- pick 5 pictures and have students identify which picture begins or ends with the sound you say, you pick a picture and student tells what sound it begins or ends with, you say a sound and have students come up with/write words beginning or ending with that sound, students identify short vowel sounds and find pictures with those sounds, and you can use some ideas mentioned with the DIBELS skills.
Reading comprehension : Read students a short story and see if they can answer questions correctly, students can read stories out of the Wonders books and then you can ask them questions after to check for comprehension
Writing: Students can practice writing letters on dry erase boards with writing lines on them, practice writing sight words, practicing writing CVC words that coincide with the letters and vowels you’ve taught, write short sentences.
Some additional ideas/activities that are great:
Education.com (for activities to make and games to play; without a subscription it will only allow you to play about 10 games per month but they’re good games)
You can also make your own games using software you may have access to at your school such as Powerpoint, ActivInspire, or Mimio.
YES! Creating engaging, interactive, fun small group activities is a lot of work.
And YES! The benefits are so worth the time and energy!
Start slow and build upon the activities you have.
And if you have grade level teammates who are willing to create some activities as well you can share or replicate each other’s activities.
The best feeling is seeing the results of your hard work; student success!
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