McCormick Noticing Blog

This week I noticed the amount of thinking and time that has to go into things that appear to be simple. I'm referring to changing the grouping of my students for their literacy center groups. Students complete center activities 4 days per week, attending 2 centers each day. Originally we had 8 centers and 7 groups, so by the end of the week each group would go to every center once and one center twice. Students were grouped according to their TRC and DIBELs scores. This worked very well and we were happy with our grouping. In the coming weeks, we will be getting reading coaches for our Reading In Motion program. These reading coaches will take two mid-level groups and work with them four days per week. This will alter our rotation because these students will be pulled to the hallway for one center, and then will come back to the rotation for the second center. My mentor and I worked very hard to switch the center rotation so that all students are getting to every center in a week, except for those who meet with a reading coach. We also had to decide which groups would benefit most from going to certain centers twice, since each group attends a center twice in the week. Based on the groups strengths and needs, we created our schedule so that all students are getting the practice that they need. We also had to switch some students from groups that they were previously in, which became difficult because some students work well together and some do not. At the beginning of the year, we simply grouped based on student scores, but now we're incorporating social and emotional needs into our grouping. We want students to help each other while they are working in groups, but we also have to make sure there will not be problems within the group members working together. We spent a great deal of time fixing our schedule so that all students will work to the best of their abilities.
It's important that I was able to incorporate social and emotional needs into the structuring of the groups. I took into account those students who need more guidance and tried to put them in a group with students who will assist them, but I also kept students with others on their same reading levels. I now see how difficult it is for teachers to plan center groups so that they will run smoothly with a minimal amount of distraction. I can understand that not all students can work well together, so teachers must structure activities where all students can be productive. This is a case of me deciding which students can and cannot work well together and creating groups based on this information. This is also a case of incorporating many programs into the classroom (Reading In Motion) to create the best learning environment. I noticed how much thought goes into grouping students and structuring the centers.