This is your permission slip to be creative with the way your small groups are and that really small groups should be about targeting the skills your students need and practicing those skills.
~ Zeba from Episode 106 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast
Episode Summary
Small groups don’t have to look like “reading groups.” Especially when your students aren’t ready for reading yet. You’re still building those foundational skills, and that absolutely counts as important, impactful small group work. Building off last week’s episode on supporting students who come into kindergarten without any letter or sound knowledge, today I’m sharing exactly how I structure small groups focused on teaching letter sounds before kids are actually reading.
If you’ve ever wondered what small group literacy should look like when your students are still learning the alphabet, this episode will give you tons of practical ideas and the confidence to do what works best for your kids.
In this episode I share:
- When I actually start small groups and why it’s okay to wait
- How to structure small group time for letter and sound practice
- Fun, hands-on activities and games that help learning stick
- How to use tools like alphabet charts, flashcards, and wordless books
Related Episodes:
- How I Teach my Students Letter Names and Their Sounds ~ Ep. 54
- Kindergarten Case Study: Supporting Kindergarteners With No Letter Knowledge ~ Ep. 105
- Teaching The Alphabet – 6 Things To Do With Each Letter ~ Ep. 104
- Simple, yet Effective, Small Group Instruction in Kindergarten
Free Workshop:
Resources:
- Letter Identification Activities & Games | Small Groups, Intervention, Centers
- Kindergarten Phonics Activities Bundle | Centers, Small Groups, Interventions
- Year-Long Literacy Support for Small Group Instruction BUNDLE -Reading & Writing
- Alphabet Worksheets Bundle: Alphabet Literacy Centers, Letter writing sound sort
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
[0:00] Hey, teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and building off of last week’s episode where I did a case study on what I would do if I had a student come to my classroom at the beginning of kindergarten, not knowing any letters or sounds. Building off of that, today I’m talking about what a small group in literacy could look like for teaching letter sounds. So let’s dive into it.
[0:26] You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away I’m Zeba creator and founder of kindergarten cafe and i help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started.
[1:18] First, I want to start by answering a question I get all the time, which is, when do you start small groups? Now, typically, I don’t start small groups in terms of reading instruction until December 1st. Because kids haven’t learned other letters and sounds yet, so I’m not going to be working with them on how to read until they’ve learned other letters and sounds. But some schools require you to start small groups earlier, even if the kids aren’t ready for them yet. But also, I have found there to be a benefit in doing small groups to work on the foundational skills of literacy. When admin or whoever is telling you you have to do a small group or you’re feeling like you have to do a small group or you’re thinking a small group could benefit your students. Sometimes I think in our head, especially if we’re new to kindergarten or we’ve taught older grades, that there’s a certain way the small groups have to look, that they’re supposed to be around reading.
[2:20] Around reading a book together, practicing reading, but it doesn’t have to be. So this is your permission slip to be creative with the way your small groups are and that really small groups should be about targeting the skills your students need and practicing those skills. So with that being said, how would I structure a small group for students still learning their letters and sounds? This is assuming that we are in the process of teaching letters and sounds as a whole class, or maybe this is for a group of students who, after I’ve taught the whole class all the letters and sounds, they still need extra practice. They still haven’t mastered all the letters and sounds. If that’s the case, even if other kids are ready for reading, I’m not going to be pushing reading on these kids until they really have that foundation in place of the letters and sounds because they’re not going to be able to sound out words if they don’t know what sound the letter makes, right? So in the small group working on letters and sounds, I start with a warm-up of the letters and sounds that we have already learned. So again, if this is, well, we’re in the middle of teaching letters and sounds, I don’t add in letters that we haven’t learned. So I just do the ones that we’ve learned. And I’ll start each session with a quick little warmup of with the flashcards, just flipping through.
[3:39] Flipping through the cards quickly to do it on a speed basis. Okay, I might also do it whole group. Well, not whole group, but with the small group, where everyone in the group is looking at the cards and saying the letter name, and that’s good sometimes. But sometimes you have kids that rely on the other kids to say it first, so they don’t actually have to do the thinking about what the letter is. So there will be times where I will have the kids do it individually, where I’ll show them a card, they have to tell me the name, and then we will go to the next person, right? If the kids are a group that really struggle, I will have an alphabet chart on the table, so they can use it as a resource while they are still learning the letters. They can find the letters on there. If they are really struggling, then I might not, do the full warm-up, or I might do the warm-up with them, but then I’ll use those same letters, cards, to connect to a letter activity. So again, we’re only focusing on the letters that they have learned as a whole class. But we might connect to a letter activity like doing a letter hunt, or playing I spy.
[4:44] So for example, I might have them find the letter on the alphabet chart, and I can give them like a fun little pointer to point with. Or I can give them a chip to cover up the letter with or we can do I spy where I have the letters on the table or I have the letters on a sheet of paper and they’re trying to find it the letter that we’re looking for and they can color it in or again they can cover with a chip or they can find it with their little pointer wand but so we’ll just go through the cards of the letters that we have learned the whole class and we’ll do it that way where we’re just working on identifying it and finding it in this activity but before I move on too far I do want to just say that I do like starting with that warm-up even as we move on to starting to reading books I will start with a quick fluency warm-up to make sure that they are remembering the letters and sounds that they’re doing it quickly that they can recall letters and sounds quickly and after I really feel like they’ve mastered that then I can move on to a fluency warm-up of like nonsense words or cvc words or high frequency words but i like that routine of starting with a quick little warm-up to get the brain activated to work on the fluency and the speed of recalling this information and then we will be using that direct warm-up with whatever we’re about to do in our activity other games that we might play connected to those letters are bingo or they have to get five in a row they can hit the letter with the fly swatter.
[6:16] That’s always really fun. It’s a good idea, as we talked about in the last episode, to add in kinesthetics for kids that are really struggling with getting the letters to stick, with remembering the letters. So hitting it with the fly swatter, jumping to it in the hallway.
[6:32] Draw, like I said in the last episode, showing them the letter card and then finding it on the alphabet chart and then having them do something with that kinesthetically, like draw the letter in the sand, make it with Play-Doh, write it with a whiteboard marker, that kind of thing. It’s really good to connect those types of activities in small groups for kids that are struggling to learn their letters and sounds.
[6:56] One of the small groups that I do while kids are, while we are all still learning letters and sounds is I use wordless books to find letters and sounds in the pictures in the book and we recently got a grant a couple a couple years ago to buy geodes which are made by the same company that makes foundations so their books are aligned with foundation scope and sequence and what I like is that it starts the kids off with knowledge building and wordless books, storytelling, and the letters that they learned that week. So I’ll be trying to find the letter, what do you see that begins with the letter T on this page? What do you see that begins with the sound B on this page? And so it’s just practice finding things that start with those letters. It’s reinforcing that.
[7:48] It’s hearing the sounds of the letters. It’s also knowledge building because I’m reading them information about the book and things. But it’s also building the routine of we come together and we look at the book together and the books teach us information or books tell us a story. We use our letter sounds to help us understand the book, that kind of thing. If I didn’t have those, I would still pull small groups and use wordless books or very simple books to begin practicing the routine of coming together. But I would focus more on the letter activities or I just wouldn’t pull small groups as frequently except for the kids that really need the foundational skills filled in or extra practice with them and so I wouldn’t pull the other kids as frequently or consistently until we were all working on we learned all the letters and sounds and we’re working on starting to put those together in blending CVC words but because I have them I do meet with my groups consistently now the kids that are really struggling with letters and sounds, they’re not, might not be ready for that, or they just need more frequent and consistent practice. And so then I would do more of that kinesthetic practice we talked about earlier, where I show them a letter, they find it, then they write it, or they trace it, whatever.
[9:14] The other small group that I do with students while they are learning letters and sounds is I have them work in a small group with my assistant doing the letter workbooks that I have. If I didn’t have an assistant, I would still have them do this in a small group, and I could get them started on it, check on it, and then I could pull a different group together. As needed. Or I could work with them on it in my small group. So in my letter workbooks, they go in order of the phonetic curriculum, and there’s several different options so that it can align with whatever curriculum you’re using. But they work through it just on the letters that they’ve learned that week. So it’s extra practice for them to identify the letter, circle it, practice writing it, coloring the pictures that begin with that sound, things like that. And so they really enjoy the workbooks.
[10:02] And since I started using them last year, I noticed a really nice growth in my students in how quickly they were picking up the letters that we were learning as a class. Because we learned as a class one day, you know, and we practiced the letter in phonics throughout the week. But then in center time, it was really good extra practice for everyone to continue working on those exact same letters. If you are looking for those alphabet workbook resources, I will link them below,
[10:31] but you can get them in my shop alphabet worksheets bundle. So just to reiterate a little bit, you can have small groups before kids are reading and you don’t have to have the small groups connected to books. In fact, I would suggest not trying to get students to read before they’re ready. And if they are working on letters and sounds as a group, or if the whole class hasn’t quite learned all their letters and sounds, you can do small groups to work on just reinforcing the letters and sounds that you have learned as a class. That could be through my alphabet worksheets bundle. It could be through games like I Spy or Bingo. And again, all those kinds of games are in my phonics activities pack. And you can even find those letters in wordless books or very simple books, right? So it’s getting the kids used to the routine of coming in a small group.
[11:20] It’s targeting the small group to the specific skills that your students need to work on and giving kids extra practice on the foundational skills that they need. If you have questions about your writing small groups and supporting students with that, I do have a free workshop on Closing the Gap Supporting Students Struggling in Literacy that you can watch the recording of. And you can also grab any of my literacy resources to help. And if you ever need more than that, I have one-on-one coaching to support you with whatever you need.
Thanks so much for listening to the Kindergarten Cafe Podcast be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies if you liked this episode the best ways to show your support are to subscribe leave a review or send it to a friend i’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips see you then.