Supporting Students Struggling in Algebra I Episode 4

Supporting Students Struggling in Algebra I – Episode 4

Making a Difference in the Classroom Using Small Group Instruction in Algebra I

J. Sanders: / All right. Hello, welcome back. Thanks for joining us again for Supporting Struggling Students in Algebra I. I'm JC Sanders.
V. Keasler: / I'm Virginia Keasler.
J. Sanders: / Today we're going to be talking about small group instruction, and how to make that happen in a secondary classroom.
V. Keasler: / Oh, secondary? Wow.
J. Sanders: / That's right. Small group in secondary.
V. Keasler: / That's cool. We have an expert in the field today. We have Russell Larson.
J. Sanders: / Fantastic. Good.
V. Keasler: / Currently he's working at Elgin at the the high school, and he has a lot of experience. He has 33 years in education, and he's held several diverse positions. He's has worked in Austin ISD, Del Valle, Pflugerville, Manor, and Elgin. He's been a K to 5 math coordinator, K to 12 math coordinator, and an instructional administrator. He's also very proud to be the Elgin Wildcats volleyball coach. Woo hoo!
J. Sanders: / Fantastic. Welcome, Russell.
V. Keasler: / Welcome.
R. Larson: / Thank you. I'm glad to be here.
J. Sanders: / We're excited that you're here to talk about small group instruction for the secondary level because I think maybe some secondary teachers are a little fearful of small group instruction, and then putting those kids in small group. Thinking about that topic, let's dive right in and help us understand. What do you mean by small group instruction at the secondary level?
R. Larson: / The way I look at small group instruction is taking a classroom and breaking it into 3 to 4 groups. A lot of times the kids can work independently. They can rotate through different stations. The teacher can be part of the groups, working with 3 or 4 kids at 1 time. It's just taking that 45 minute block and breaking it into small chunks. Allow the kids to move about. All them to work independently to work on skills that they already have knowledge on, or work on something they're going to be looking at over the next couple of weeks and give them a preview of some lessons coming on.
V. Keasler: / That sounds great. A lot of times the teachers in secondary they think that, "If I'm going to have to work with this group, what am I going to have to do with the other 26 kids?" Can you give us some guidance on that? What would you tell them?
R. Larson: / That is a difficult part. The first thing you have to do is definitely establish routines and some type of management system that the kids understand that when you're working with a small group they're supposed to be independent themselves. With that in mind, you have to provide the lessons and the activities that the kids can be successful with. A lot of times I like to position myself by the, as I call them, the Russell's in the room to make sure I have close proximity while they're working independently. Making sure that the instructions for the station or the center are very, very explicit, and that there really isn't a lot of need for definition of what's going on. Look at it maybe the day before. Pre-load and pre-explain, "This is what you will be doing, and this is the expectations for the small group."
V. Keasler: / Are you trying to say you're a knucklehead?
R. Larson: / A little bit. I was one of those kids. Trust me.
V. Keasler: / I guess just making sure your classroom is ready for that, and just making sure kids are used to doing those things on a regular basis.
R. Larson: / Definitely. When I started small groups in the classroom we go through a pre-day of just actually physically moving about the classroom. It might be, "Okay, go to this group. Sit for 30 seconds. Get up and move." We talk about, how do you move? When you're sitting in the group, how are you supposed to act? What's the noise level that it's supposed to be? Then you train the kids, and then when you start the small groups I traditionally wouldn't put myself into a group to begin with because I want to be able to float through and work with the kids. It's just management is the first load up.
J. Sanders: / I think even at the secondary level it's good to think about all that stuff you just said still needs to happen. We think of maybe, "Oh, elementary kids, they need all that routine and expectations laid out, but secondary kids know what they're doing." Not always, right?
R. Larson: / Not always at all. In fact, I think the secondary kids enjoy the freedom of a small group, but you have to structure it, and let them know the expectations of what they have to accomplish at the end of each group.
V. Keasler: / I think it's a lot of fun once you get used to that, and have some sort of control, routines and things, in place. I think it's a lot more fun for a teacher to be a facilitator than lecturer.
R. Larson: / Yeah because you're actually seeing the kids learn, and that's what society wants our kids to be able to do now anyway, so they have to learn with a group, and come up with a final product, and be successful.
J. Sanders: / There's one benefit. Tell us more about other benefits of this small group.
R. Larson: / I think another benefit is it allows the kids to struggle and to rely on each other. Another benefit is you can then differentiate the different activities. If you have kids that are at different levels with an algebra classroom, for example, you can go and say, "Okay. These kids are really, really gifted. They're very talented," or whatever. "They get the concepts. I can challenge them at one level, but yet not frustrate the rest of the kids." Then you can take those kids that are struggling with it, or maybe need a little tweak, you pull them in 4, 5 minutes they're going to get it.
I've experienced with secondary kids, if they don't understand it they're going to shy away. They're going to hold back. They're not going to ask questions in the classroom. But if I get 4 kids with me that are all struggling with domain and range, or slope, or linear equations, or something like that, they're going to be more comfortable asking questions within a smaller group than the whole masses.
V. Keasler: / Another thing I was thinking about is sometimes teachers tell me that, "Well, the kids aren't used to working in small groups, so it's really hard for me to get them to do that." What would you tell that teacher?
R. Larson: / You look out in the hallways the kids are in small groups all the time. They socialize in small groups, so I think it's just getting away from that fear of allowing the kids to do, and takeaway your control, I guess. The kids want to work together. They want to be more independent, and sometimes the kids, they're tired of that lecture, that sit and get all day. They want to get up and move around. I find that later on in the afternoon the small groups are better because the kids have had all day of sitting, sitting, sitting. You allow them that freedom to learn independently. They tend to want that, and they move about the room going 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, and being successful with an assigned activity, and not listening to the mundane of the teacher over, and over, and over.
J. Sanders: / Tell us some tips about bringing that accountability though because I think that's another fear teachers have about, "Well, I let them go off, and they're going to chitchat, and be on their phones, and then they don't do what I need them to do."
R. Larson: / The thing you have to do is make sure that you have an exit ticket. You have to have, what is the final product? By the time you're done with this 5 minute activity, 7 minute activity, what do you have to make sure you accomplish? One way I always start off is it's a group grade to begin with because with me as a facilitator I can come over there, and I can ask anyone of them It's like, "JC, what is the answer to this question?" Now, if we just bring JC along, and don't have her learn, and be responsible then all of us are going to get a ding on a grade or an essay ticket.
It's like, "Virginia, she always does the work for us." No. As the teacher I know, "Okay, JC kind of hides a little bit. I'm going to make her accountable." The kid's start learning, "We've got to bring us all together, and everybody in the group has to participate because we're all responsible for each other for our learning."
J. Sanders: / That's great. That's really great. Let's see. What else were we going to ask? Oh. How about determining?
V. Keasler: / Now you have your kids, and you're going to setup groups. How do you determine how to set them up?
R. Larson: / There's multiple ways, obviously. If I'm at the end of a unit, and I'm doing a review then I'm going to go ahead and group the kids homogeneously, and I'm going to take all my struggling learners in one group, the kids that are kind of mid-level together, and the kids that have it, and I can differentiate, and I can give them an extension. If it's at the beginning of a unit I'm definitely going to do heterogeneously. As the kids walk in, a trick I've used before are a deck of playing cards. As the kids walk in I determine ahead of time, "If I give them face card I know they're going to be in my high group, or if I give them an Ace through 5 they're going to be in this group. If I give them a diamond they're going to be in this group," so I kind of pre-load those kids, and I can put them the way I want them.
At the beginning of a unit they're all heterogeneous. Everybody's going to learn together, and I have different groups of kids that are going to go to. One of the stations would be what we just got through learning. Kind of a review. Another one with me possibly is a pre-teach of what we're about to do. You were with us when we did quadratics. That's a very, very difficult concept, so that might be something I might do small groups with, and in my group I would facilitate that group and show them 4 different ways quadratics would look. I wouldn't expect mastery, but I would just introduce to them what's going on. In that situation every group would rotate through me.
The other three groups going on would be maybe reviewing different ways of factoring, or an activity that we had just got through finishing, like systems of equations, how I can plug into the calculator, something like that. I kind of know if it's in the beginning or the end of the unit, am I going heterogeneous grouping? Am I doing homogeneous groupings? It's always different. The kids are never in the same group for more than maybe 2 weeks at a time.
V. Keasler: / That's wonderful.
J. Sanders: / That's great.
V. Keasler: / Teachers are wonder also with all this grouping, is there going to be a time where I'm going to have kids in rows, and I'm going to do some direct teaching?
R. Larson: / Absolutely because you can't be in small groups 24/7. There has to be a time that you have to direct teach. You have to have the kids have some practice time. Just good old fashion school house, I call it sometimes. Just multiple practice. When you are setting up those multiple practices a place I caution is teaching one way and one way only because kids don't learn the same.
J. Sanders: / That's right.
R. Larson: / I want to make sure I show them this method because JC's going to pick up on that. I'm going to show them this method because Virginia catches on that, or Russell catches this way, but the kids have to have a toolbox, so it's multiple approaches to them.
J. Sanders: / I think you kind of mentioned that with the benefits is that differentiation piece because you then you can bring in that differentiation piece again when the students are divided up into those small groups. You show multiple approaches in your lecture time, and then also continue that in your small group instruction. Is that what you're saying?
R. Larson: / Definitely.
J. Sanders: / I love that you kind of brought up the idea of flexible grouping. That at the beginning of a unit we're going to be a little bit more homogeneous. I get stuck on that word too. At the end of the unit we can ... Oh, wait. Backwards.
R. Larson: / Backwards.
J. Sanders: / At the beginning of the unit heterogeneous, and then the end of the unit more homogeneous. I like that. Just, again, thinking about, I work with students with special education services. How do I make sure that kids aren't being stigmatized? You talked about the deck of cards. You kind of keep that in mind. How do we make sure kids aren't feeling like they're always in that group?
R. Larson: / That's a good thing because kids want to work with other kids, and if you keep putting them in the same group ... I was always the bluebirds in reading back in elementary because I was a struggling reader, and I didn't like to read. The kids are going to pick up, "Okay, I'm with ... Ah! I know who I'm with today," but then the next day or the next time you do it it's like, "Oh, I'm with somebody else. Oh, I'm with JC. Wow. She's always makes A's. Cool. I'm in the good group this time." The kids kind of catch on to that, and just keep them guessing the whole time, but I know as the teacher what I want to accomplish. It's always based on data.
V. Keasler: / Well, you just mentioned data. Wow, what a segue into this.
J. Sanders: / That's right.
V. Keasler: / What research is out there that support classrooms working in this manner, in small groups?
R. Larson: / I always go back to the TEKS. I go back to the student expectations because kids are going to find strengths and weaknesses across math curriculum. We know that if we just keep teaching to the masses the kids are going to miss certain things. Every time we do a common assessment, every time we do a benchmark, every time we do a district assessment the teachers have to go back in there and look at the data, and decide, what kid struggle with this student expectation?
I know then after a common assessment or mainly a district assessment the next week I'm going to do some small group lessons based on the TEKS we just got through doing. That's why I'm going to use my data and say, "Okay, these 4 kids struggled with X. These 4 kids did really well with X. Then there are about 8 to 15 that were kind of somewhere in between." Then I have to start thinking about, "Okay, I have to come up with an idea, a lesson, or activities to differentiate and extend. Allow some kids to continue to practice because they were okay, but then I've got to sit with them because if they don't get these student expectations what we're jumping off on next, they're going to be lost and there's no connections. Constantly using data.
J. Sanders: / That's great. I think that really pulls us actually into our previous episodes, podcasts, about formative assessment. Where we talked about formative assessment, and how to pull that in. You're talking about data driven decisions on our small group instruction. That's using formative assessment. Then we talked about, just our last episode was about spiraling, so how to also use spiraling in our classroom. In that small group, like you were just saying, we're going to spiral in those concepts that we know that they were struggling with.
R. Larson: / That's really cool with your warm ups. I know Virginia came out and talked to us a little bit about warm ups. When you spiral those warm ups, if you're seeing kids start to struggle with a warm up that we taught 3 weeks ago, that's an indicator to me. It's like, "Okay, I have to stop, and tomorrow punt and have some small groups on some skill that we should've already learned." In a secondary classroom it's difficult because you're third period class might not need it, but your fourth and sixth might, and so you have to build in some of that flexibility. I know. I push my teachers always to keep going, to keep going because we can't get behind, but yet I also believe, and I preach this a lot, if you keep shoving they're going to get further behind. Sometimes you can stop, review, but you're going to gain that time back 3 to 4 weeks later because the kids are going to be like, "Ah, now I got it."
J. Sanders: / They made that connection.
R. Larson: / Definitely.
V. Keasler: / That's the problem with just keeping, as you put it, shoving more and more material at you. Then if you didn't understand 3 weeks ago about linear equations, and now 3 weeks later we're doing some more linear equations, I've already shutdown because I don't understand any of it. When ask kids sometimes, you'll say, "Well, what is it you don't understand?" "I don't understand anything. All of it. I can't get it." I really like the idea that you're going to go backwards a little bit and make sure you pick up those stragglers.
J. Sanders: / I think you had also sent us a piece about mass practice versus distributive practice, and that kind of follows into this whole conversation, right?