Smenters???

With the implementation of Common Core comes the directive to do more small groups. Small groups for reteaching, small groups to facilitate genuine conversations, small groups to provide differentiation, small groups to encourage collaboration, small groups to provide hands on activities.... I do see the benefits of small groups, but one of my biggest concerns is the time that students spend working independently while the teacher is meeting with other groups. Although small groups are supposed to be flexible, engaging, and rigorous, they can all too easily fall into the old school "Blue Bird Reading Group" model.

Since last year I have been working to find a way to do small groups without having students miss out on valuable instruction and to limit the "busy work" students often get while the teacher is meeting with other groups. The solution I developed over much trial and error was.... drum roll.... Smenters. It's a combination of centers and small groups. (Yes, it's been a long year, and we're only on week 3.)

Just like with 'traditional' centers, students rotate through set activities in a group. The activities may be a group activity or an independent activity. The big difference is that the teacher is at one of the rotations/stations and teaches/facilitates that station. It still provides students with the opportunity to receive differentiated instruction that meets their needs and strengths, yet provides engaging and purposeful activities while they are not meeting with the teacher.

Because each activity is limited to a specific amount of time, it helps students stay on task, and the movement of moving from one center to another is great for students who need a chance to get the wiggles out once in a while. Kids usually enjoy and are motivated by working in small groups, and it tends to encourage participation by all students.

Although centers can definitely require a lot of teacher prep and organization, they don't necessarily have to. The beauty of my "smenters" is that they employ the idea, organization, and flow of centers, but the teachers main task is still similar to what it would be in a traditional small group.

Here's an example of the "Smenters" I did with my group of twenty-six fifth grade students today. I had two groups of nine and one group of eight, all heterogeneous and randomly grouped. We are currently reading the novel Out of My Mind and working on the skills of memoirs, inferencing, analyzing characters and reading non-fiction texts. Students were in each center for 20 minutes.
  - CENTER #1: Working with a partner on a laptop to research Cerebral Palsy. (The main character of the novel has CP.) I put shortcuts to three websites in a folder for easy access. Pairs spent time reading and browsing the three different sites and then took notes on a provided note outline.
  - CENTER #2: Independently reading Chapter 6 of the novel.
  - CENTER #3: **teacher facilitated center** Participate in an Analyzing Characters & Inferencing activity.