Reading strategy groups are a highly effective way of grouping your students during guided reading. Instead of grouping students by ability, you are simply grouping students based on the strategy they need help with. While this way of grouping sounds ideal, there are some problems you may run into if you’ve never grouped this way before.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. Low maintenance describes me as a teacher. I am always striving to find the simplest yet most effective way to accomplish my goals for my classroom, and my guided reading time is no exception. Here are my best tips for running reading strategy groups, plus the reading activities that made guided reading stress-free in my classroom.
Tips for Grouping Your Students
Once you have worked with your students enough, you’ll start to learn their strengths and weaknesses that go beyond their reading levels. It is important to recognize if a student is struggling with a particular skill, or if they are just struggling with reading the passage. Here are a few tools you may want to use to help you decide if/when a student should be placed in a strategy group.
- Classroom Reading Assessment – Group students that miss similar problems on an assessment.
- Conferring Notes – Skim through your conferring notes and see which students are struggling with the same skill.
- Daily Reading Reviews (pictured below) – Just like an assessment, you can use daily spiral reading reviews to see where students are struggling and group them accordingly. This gives you weekly insights into your students’ progress.
- Reading Level Assessments – As you give reading level assessments (i.e. Fountas & Pinnell, Rigby, etc.), note students who struggle in similar areas of the assessment.
- Informal Assessments – Even a quick question during independent reading time can tell you who needs more help with a skill.
By using these tools, you will be able to see where your students are struggling and group them accordingly.
Tips for Teaching Your Strategy Group Lesson
Strategy lessons can be planned similar to any other guided reading lesson. You may want to use resources like mentor texts and anchor charts when teaching the focus strategy. Keep in mind that the students in your group are reading at different levels. You will want to avoid selecting long texts to use during your strategy groups. I have found that short snippets from larger texts work well while teaching a strategy.
Just like with traditional guided reading groups, I like to take notes during my strategy groups. This helps me remember who still needs help and who has mastered the strategy.
Free Strategy Group Notes Page
Tips for Independent Practice
After teaching my lesson, I like to give my group of students time to practice the strategy on their own, while still working in the group. This is where strategy groups can get complicated! Being that students are reading at different reading levels, you will need to differentiate your practice activity.
The best way to differentiate the practice portion of a strategy group is to have each student use their own independent reading text. I always make sure my students have a fiction and nonfiction text on hand. Depending on the skill, they will bring the appropriate text to our strategy group.
Another way I like to differentiate is to use these reading strategy graphic organizers. I simply find the activity that matches the strategy we are working on, and each student can complete it using their own text. This resource has saved me tons of time in planning my strategy groups!
How to Make Guided Reading Stress-Free
It has always been a struggle to find high-quality activities for my students to complete, not only during my guided reading groups but on their own as well. This problem led to my solution.
My Goal: To have rigorous reading activities my students could complete during guided reading time to help them practice the reading skills I had already taught them.
My Problem: Having a ton of fiction and nonfiction texts to use with my students but no activities to go with them!
My Solution: I created skill and strategy-based reading activities that could easily be paired with almost ANY fiction or nonfiction text!
Best Part: Differentiation can be easily accomplished just by changing out the level of the text.
It took me time to make these. However, I can literally use them ALL year and never have to ask, “What am I doing for guided reading groups this week?” or “What will my students do during their independent reading time?”
How I Use Them During Guided Reading
As an activity for students to complete during independent reading time, I put out a basket of books or articles for my students to choose from (fiction or nonfiction, depending on what I am teaching at the time). Once a week, my students are given the opportunity to choose a text and complete the activity sheet with the text. In addition, I use this activity as a weekly reading grade. It gives me an idea of how they are doing with that skill.
I also use these sheets during my guided reading groups. They are perfect for learning or reviewing skills, and they are super easy to differentiate between groups. Just by using a different text and providing a bit more or less support, I am meeting the needs of every reading group in my classroom!
Examples of Texts I Use
- National Geographic for Kids
- Science and social studies books I have collected
- Short, interesting articles I have collected
- Picture books
- Short stories
Here is a list of FREE nonfiction reading websites you can use!
I now offer these reading activity sheets in my shop. There are 22 fiction and 22 nonfiction sheets, they are all 100% editable (just in case you need to make changes), and they come in two formats: my regular format (with the explanation of the skill) and one with more space to write. They also now come with a Google Classroom version and anchor charts!
Try it for FREE! Just click the button below and I’ll give you access to my freebies!
Looking for more ways to help your readers grow? Check out my 5 ways to increase reading comprehension and my daily reading review system. I hope these tips help you make your reading strategy groups simple and stress-free!
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