grouping Kindergarten

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grouping Kindergarten
By Gail

Don't be afraid of grouping. Be afraid of keeping those groups stagnant. They should be changing all the time as you determine who needs to do more work on what. I will be starting Guided Reading this fall after taking a
course in it this summer. The actual reading groups will not meet until the end of the month but I will begin small and large group letter work the second week of school.
When I am working on GR, the other children will be doing a good number of center activities. My goal is to have 10 or 15 different activities that the children can rotate to throughout the week, assigned on a work board.

Keeping everyone busy with a task and working independently should keep the noise level down. The teacher I observed last spring taught a half day program without a classroom aide and it went great. I know it will take me some time to create that kind of "symphony" but my full day program and 1 1/2 aides should make things easier than he had it. For ideas on activities, see Word Matters and Guided Reading, two good books. Getting back to grouping, the course I took this summer had the children moving from one group to another depending on their progress with the text. Success for the children is the goal. What do they need to know? What do I need to teach them?