Teaching Writing in Small Groups

Find out how just a few minutes of purposeful, responsive teaching can have a big impact with your students. Jennifer Serravallo’s Teaching Writing in Small Groups details essential practices for optimizing groups that help you:

* value each child’s language and literacy practices
* develop relationships with your writers
* teach with efficiency
* increase student engagement
* improve independence
* develop social support amongst students 
* provide space to give and receive feedback.

First, Teaching Writing in Small Groups lays the foundation for success. Jen shows how to create groups for maximum effectiveness and how to make what you teach responsive, clear, and sticky. Then she streamlines differentiated instruction with a menu of small-group options for providing just-right support:

* strategy lessons
* guided writing
* shared writing
* interactive writing
* inquiry groups
* reflection groups
* coaching writing partnerships and clubs

Jen has thought of it all. Twelve videos with writers from Kindergarten to seventh grade from in-person and online classrooms model each type of small group, selected passages and forms are available in the Online Resources in Spanish, downloadable skill-progression note-taking forms provide focus for instructional decision making, and her “Take It to Your Classroom” feature supports implementation for individuals or study groups.

Read Jennifer Serravallo’s Teaching Writing in Small Groups because the question isn’t whether small groups work, but how to make the most of them.