What Are You Grouping For?, Grades 3-8: How to Guide Small Groups Based on Readers - Not the Book

Bring out daring readers with dynamic small groups!

Like many educators in intermediate classrooms across the country, you may be using guided reading principles to teach reading. Whether you’re following targeted reading levels or sticking with your school’s established routines, chances are that guided reading has become synonymous with small group reading for you and your students. But . . . are your students getting the most out of small groups? Are readers of all ability levels experiencing the dynamic learning that can occur in small groups? Do you feel confident that the way you’re grouping kids is based on their wants and needs?

Intermediate grade readers don’t need to be guided as much as they need to be engaged―and authors Julie Wright and Barry Hoonan have solutions for doing just that using small groups. What Are You Grouping For? offers the practical tools, classroom examples, and actionable steps essential for starting, sustaining, and mastering the management of small groups. This book explains the five teacher moves that work together to support students’ reading independence through small group learning―kidwatching, pivoting, assessing, curating, and planning―and provides examples to guide you and your students toward success. 

From must-have beginning-of-the-year strategies to step-by-step advice for implementation, this guide breaks down the processes that support small groups and help create effective instructional reading programs. Based on more than 45 years of combined experience in the classroom, this resource will empower you with tools to ensure that your readers are doing the reading, thinking, and doing―not you. 

JULIE WRIGHT is a teacher, instructional coach, and educational consultant with over twenty-five years of experience in rural, suburban, and urban education settings.  She holds National Board Certification as well as a B.S. in education, a master’s in language arts and reading, a reading endorsement, and extensive school leadership post-graduate work, including a pre-K through grade 9 principal license from The Ohio State University. She has served as an adjunct faculty member at Ashland University and University of Wisconsin, teaching graduate courses focused on curriculum, instruction, and assessment and instructional coaching respectively.  Julie gets her inspiration from her husband, David, and their three children, Sydney, Noah, and Max.

BARRY HOONAN teaches fifth and sixth grade at Odyssey Multiage Program on Bainbridge Island, Washington. He works with teachers both in the U.S. and internationally, including appointments as a three-time Fulbright Teaching Exchange teacher in the United Kingdom, a teaching fellow at Harlem Village Academy in NYC, and next year― a teacher-consultant at the American School of Brasilia. Barry is a co- author of Beyond Reading and Writing: Inquiry, Curriculum, and Multiple Ways of Knowing (NCTE, 2000), and is a recipient of NCTE’s Edward Hoey Award and of the Bonnie Campbell Hill Washington State Literacy Award.