Myth Busting
This common practice involves giving advanced students "more of the same" work once they finish early.
What is Volume over Depth?
These "starters" provide written access to help students move from verbal ideas to written evidence.
What are Sentence Frames (or Starters)?
These groups should be based on this, rather than a student's general "reading level.
What is a Specific Skill (or Data Point)?
This type of questioning allows every student to participate because there are multiple "right" ways to answer.
What are Open-Ended Questions?
This grouping method keeps students in the same "Low/Med/High" circles for the entire semester.
What is Static Grouping?
A visual tool that helps students organize thoughts without the "cognitive load" of writing a full paragraph first.
Graphic Organizer?
The ideal length (in minutes) for a "Micro-Intervention" targeted at one specific phonics or fluency gap.
What is 5 to 15 minutes?
A strategy that gives students a list of "Must Do" and "May Do" tasks to manage their own learning pace.
What is a Choice Menu (or Choice Board)?
True or false: Independent reading time alone can close the gap for the "reading poor."
What is False? (Struggling readers need explicit instruction; simply "reading more" of a text they can't decode doesn't help).
Providing this group of words helps English Language Learners or struggling readers access complex academic discussions.
What is a word bank?
If 10 students already know how to identify "Main Idea," don't make them listen to the lecture. Give them the "Must Do" task immediately. Use those 20 minutes to "Front-Load" the concept to the students who struggle. What is this called?
What is differentiation?
For an advanced student, instead of "write more," you might ask them to write from this, which requires higher-level synthesis.
What is a Different Perspective (or Alternate POV)?
This word/descriptor is often mistaken for laziness in older elementary students, but it's actually a rational response to years of reading failure.
What is Avoidance?
This 2-minute "pre-teaching" strategy involves showing a small group exactly what the finished high-quality work looks like.
What is Exemplar Modeling?
This is the most important thing for the rest of the class to be doing so the teacher can focus on a small group.
What is Meaningful Independent Work?
This "Self-Check" tool allows students to monitor their own progress without waiting for teacher feedback.
What is a Rubric or Checklist?
'Balanced Literacy,' is a myth that has been "busted" for this instructional approach that is characterized by being explicit, systematic, and cumulative, ensuring that reading is taught as a code to be broken rather than a skill to be caught."
What is Structured Literacy?
These are many ways a student can demonstrate their understanding.
What is choice? What is multiple modes of response?
When a student has mastered a skill, they move out of the group. This is the term for the "easy in, easy out" nature of groups.
What is fluid grouping?
The term for a task that is accessible to all (Low Floor) but has no limit on how deep a student can go (High Ceiling).
What is Cognitive Depth?