Welcome to our blog post on how to make small group instruction less stressful for you, more engaging for your students and more meaningful throughout the year! Let’s get started!
Small Group Instruction Stress
We’ve all been there. We know we should be pulling small focus groups for students that are struggling to meet the standards on a daily basis. It sounds so easy, but scrounging around and stressing about what to do with your students during small group instruction can deter a teacher from even pulling these important focus groups. Have we caught your attention? Does this sound familiar? This past year, we decided to do something about it to make our small group instruction less stressful! We can’t wait to share our solution with you!
Standards Based Brochures for Small Group Instruction
Our solution to the stress associated with small group instruction was to create a standards based brochure (or tri-fold) for our standards. Our entire year of small group instruction would be done in one easy step! Standards based brochures are a ready-to-use resource that we can simply grab and use! They are seriously as simple as that. We copy the brochures and have them ready to use in our small group instruction. Students bring a book and we are ready for small group instruction success!
Materials for Small Group Instruction
The materials required for our small group instruction consist of brochures relating to the standard, pencils and picture books! Here’s why we love using picture books. Picture books hardly get any recognition in the upper grade classroom. We want our students reading chapter books, chapter books and more chapter books. But what about picture books? Picture books are an amazing way to get an entire story in a short amount of time! You can quickly touch on author’s craft, parts of the plot, and then focus in on your targeted standard. The most important reason that we love to read picture books during small group instruction is that they are engaging!
Standards Based Brochures Will Save Your Sanity
Small group instruction is not the only way to use our standards based brochures… it just happens to be our favorite! Standards based brochures have other uses inside of the classroom. Have you ever had a hand go up and a student say, “Teacher, I’m done. Now what?” BWAHAHAHAHA… of course you have! You’re a teacher! Well, this question can have a teacher losing their mind on a daily basis and multiple times a day! Standards based brochures have been a life-saver in our classrooms and we know they will be a life-saver in your classroom too!
Students love standards based brochures because it allows them to have choice in the standard that they want to focus on. As we teach a standard, we add the choice to our display in the back of our room. Students know that they can choose anything in the display. They choose a brochure, grab a book and get to work! Students are able to practice the standard five times with five different books!
An Added Bonus
Don’t you just love the parents that ask, “How can I help my child master the standards you are teaching in the classroom at home?” We love parents that want to get involved and help their child, but we don’t always have an easy answer for them. Standards based brochures have been our saving grace! We hand these amazing and wonderful parents our brochure and they are sent off to practice exactly what we are doing in the classroom at home with their child! These are great for Parent-Teacher Conferences! We also love to send home brochures attached to progress reports or tests that were not proficient. Your parents will think you’ve got it all figured out!
The Many Possibilities of Standards Based Brochures
Standards based brochures are the perfect solution to many problems that teachers have in the classroom. Small group instruction, centers, early finishers, intervention, and school-to-home connections can leave teachers feeling overwhelmed and stressed out. We have found that having these brochures have solved many problems.
The main reason why we love these brochures is that our students love them.
They are perfect for practicing and reviewing standards all year long and they keep our students engaged!
What more could a teacher ask for?
Interested in Grabbing this for Yourself?
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Now, it’s time for a GIVEAWAY!
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Good Luck!
Looking for other ways to lessen the stress in your classroom?
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36 Comments
Thank you for an awesome resource! I am not sure which one I would teach first because I am moving to a new classroom and will have to figure out those kids first. But these would be handy to grab and go!
These look awesome. I would absolutely love to them.
Love this!! I struggle daily with trying to plan for small groups. This makes it so easy, yet absolutely purposeful. So excited to use these brochures!
These look amazing! I would love to try them out in my classroom.
I would love to add this resource to my resourceful pile so that I can use it within my small groups as well as begin by using the Main idea and supporting Details standard because every year I find that it is the weakest area for my students.
I would be really excited to have these brochures as an option in my classroom to use during small groups or for early finishers. I loved the idea of sharing with assessments where students are struggling. We are working on Similes and Metaphors right now so that would be the first standard I would use them for. Thanks for all your hard work making this resource!
This is a fantastic resource! While all standards are important, I think I would use the ‘Theme’ standard first. This is a difficult skill for students to grasp, but working in small groups with a variety of texts will definitely assist them in mastering the skill!
I think I would focus on dialogue and quotations first. I love this resource- what a great idea!
I would teach theme first if I had this unit because that is a skill my students struggle with.
I love these brochures! I would like to start with the theme brochure! It’s something I struggle with and this will make it much easier!
This is great! Always a struggle to try to plan small groups and this makes it so easy!
Excited to check this out! I work with a lot of different groups at different levels! Very useful!
I would love to use this bundle especially for small group instruction! Especially for teaching reading comprehension strategies. Looks like a life saver of a bundle!
Thank you so much for sharing this and I need this to support small group and as a good check in for students when independent reading
What a great idea! This looks like an awesome resource. The first standard I would teach with this would be context clues. I love the way these can be used for fast finishers. I think the kids would like the feeling of selecting a brochure to work on. We have talked about getting brochures from our travel and I use brochures that I have collected through the years in my instruction. Thank you for this wonderful product!
I love this! I would tackle theme and context clues first. That seems to be the weakest area for my students right now.
I love this idea! I would first try out the Point Of View brochure with my kiddos. We are starting to recognize when someone is talking by using context clues I the conversation and I think this would be a great segue into POV because we are identifying pronouns already! Can’t wait to check it out!
These look awesome. I would absolutely love to use them in my classroom!
I am graduating in May and just signed a contract! These will come very handy during my first year of teaching. I am not sure if I will be teaching 3rd of 4th yet, but I will start with the plot as it is something that they are familiar with and will then introduce other brochures throughout the year. It would be an awesome resource for my first group of students.
These look AMAZING. Our school board is always struggling with parents asking about solid evidence for extension work and examples of what early finishers are doing. So this would be PERFECT in SO many ways! I would definitely start with growth mindset – so important and one of my favorite things to teach throughout the year!
Love this resource! Teaching 2nd, 3rd and 5th together in a special ed room this would be so useful. Right now were working on character motivation and actions .
This resource looks amazing! I am a first year teacher at a very low school. Our reading coaches have been getting on us about small group but I’ve been drowning in information. This seems like the PERFECT solution. I would start with main idea and supporting details because that seems to be where my kids are struggling the most right now.
I would love to have these! Especially for 5.RL.2 Theme…my group can always use practice with theme!! ❤️
I would love to use this resource when teaching smilies and metaphors! It seems like such an engaging and excellent resource that will actually help students grasp the concept while enjoying the approach to learning! I am so glad I came across your page, it is full of amazing ideas and tips! As a first year teacher, your posts provide me with such inspiration!
Such an awesome resource! I’d love to tackle character traits!
I would love to use this resource in a small group setting & for early finishers! I definitely love the idea of using it with picture books in a center!
I love this idea! Thanks for sharing the Amazon link for the clear brochure organizers. I would start with context clues!
I love these! I’ve had them on my wish list! I would definitely try out main idea and details as a review!
These resources look amazing! I am always looking for new ways to engage my students in higher level thinking on books of THEIR choice!!! This is a perfect way to hold them accountable for their reading! 🙂
These look amazing! I would love to use the Theme or Main Idea brochures first. Students struggle with these topics and this would be great practice!
As a first year teacher, I have been gathering all the tearesources I can to ensure I’m teaching all off the standards! Our school books are so outdated and aren’t even aligned to common core. I’m constantly having to purchase products that will gain the attention of my students. I would absolutely love to have these reading brochures! I know my students would really benefit from them.
I would want to teach inferences, plot or theme first with that bundle!!
Using these brochures is genius! I think I would start with similes and metaphors. That’s a fun one!
Since we’re reviewing conjunctions next week, I would definitely use the FANBOYS brochure first!
I would use them all! I would love them for reteaching skills my students are struggling with, especially as it is getting close to dreaded state testing time!
I would use them all right away! I would love to use them for reteaching skills my students are still struggling with, especially with dreaded state testing coming up!