Do you group your students by ability?

For literacy centers, I have 2 or 3 students in each group. I have a strong student in each group. There are students that start kindergarten knowing all of their letters and sounds, and then there are kids who know nothing. I find by mixing the groups the student that knows more, is a leader in the group. They find joy in helping and guiding their peers. The level of difficulty varies in each center but no one is bored. I always have a back up activity (puzzle, books, etc.) in every paper based center for those who finish early. There is no time for boredom.

Do you pull groups to work with during this time and if so, is this one of their centers or do you pull more than one group?

I meet with guided reading groups every day. My guided reading groups are grouped by ability and have 3 or 4 students in them. I meet with all groups every other day and the lowest three groups every day. We read a book and have a mini lesson. Each group gets around 10 minutes.

Do you also do math centers?

On no! LOL. That would take so long. My math center time is only about 30 minutes versus literacy centers, which is about 45 min. I have six groups of 3 or 4 students. They are mixed ability groups. I will do a post soon about math centers. During math centers, I pull about 4 small groups for interventions. They come from all center groups. Intervention groups take about 5 minutes each every day so they still have time to do their center work.

Thanks for all of your great questions! I hope this helps in some way. Let me know if I can answer anything else.

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