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Blast from the Past: You may be interested in the 9 comments that the original elicited: I work with students in small groups daily and need the rest of the students to be engaged in meaningful practice of their new literacy skills. What types of activities would be best for this practice? Shanahan response: September 12, 2020 version This entry first posted on September 12, 2020, and reposted on August 24, 2024. Recently, I noticed a couple of research studies published in 2024 about seatwork and it reminded me of this blog. Like most professors, I have long looked askance at worksheets and their role in reading instruction (though I had relied upon them as a teacher). These newer studies (e.g., Amendum, et al., 2024), suggest that they are not as bad as we have been led to believe (Taylor, et al., 2005). Good teachers often use a mix of direct instruction along with some practice sheets. Nevertheless, there are studies (Block, et al., 2009) that suggest that this traditional seatwork can be improved upon. That study assigned reading that the children did on their own but provided provocative questions that required students to write extensive answers, and this had a positive impact upon achievement. The suggestions below should be of use as well.
The benefits of small group instruction are obvious. Teachers can make the learning experience more apt and intense - the small numbers allow for more responsiveness, more vigilant monitoring, and fine tuning of the teaching.

The downside of small group instruction should be equally evident. While the teacher is working with one small group, the rest of the kids are on their own. Much more learning takes place with the teacher and, frankly, much less with the kids on their own.

There are some supports and approaches that can mitigate this problem, though their availability is uneven. For instance, some schools provide teacher's aides, and this assistance can allow productive activity with a couple of groups simultaneously. There may be parent volunteers who play that role. Some schools are close to a college and have access to preservice teachers. And, then there are those classrooms with multiple computers that allow students to work with research-proven programs.

Those situations exist, but there are many more teachers who are on their own trying to manage small groups. I suspect you are one of those.

Even in those cases, there are things a teacher can do to minimize the problem. For instance, in some schemes the teacher moves among groups. This takes various forms. In paired reading, the teacher goes from pair-to-pair to monitor progress, guide partners' responses, and add some teaching to the mix. I recommend that all the kids in a class work on fluency simultaneously, to make this as efficient as possible. Sometimes teachers alternate between two guided reading groups, interacting with one while the other reads. Cumbersome, perhaps, but workable. Another possibility is book club groups in which the kids play a big role in operating the group discussions; this allows the teacher to move profitably among even more groups.

Teachers can also have everyone in the class reading the same selection at the same time. What varies in this case is the amount of scaffolding, support, and extension that will be provided to some students. That increases the amount of teaching delivered to the lowest readers (they get more help) and decreases it for the best - which fits nicely with Carol Connor's research (2022) on what leads to the greatest learning for a class. (Connor found that the best readers could make real progress reading on their own and being engaged in more independent activities. She did not find the same benefits for the other students.)

In any event, I've long recommended that teachers minimize small group work. Often such work is unnecessary, engaged in only because the teachers are required by their district to do it. This leads to silly stuff like teachers delivering the same lesson multiple times.

While I try to avoid any more small group teaching than necessary, I would never ban the practice. It's just too valuable and classroom life too complicated to not have access to it - at least when it is used appropriately.

Let's say you use small group instruction strategically, to target learning needs of students and you need to know what kinds of activities to assign the other students. For that, all you need to do is turn your attention to the research on seatwork...

Except there is no body of research on seatwork (just one study as far as I can tell-and, though helpful, it doesn't even attempt to describe appropriate instruction in any kind of specific detail).

This is an issue without empirical data; Just lots of authoritative opinion.

So, let me add my advice to the mix.

Use activities that require a lot of accountable reading and writing. We want kids to read and write a lot. Some schemes aimed at doing that reduce instruction markedly to free up reading time. I'm not talking about that kind of thing, since studies haven't found those practices to be productive for most kids.

The accountability issue is big here. If students know that there will be some real follow up that will take them back through the text in detail it changes both their reading behavior and their learning. I'm not a big fan of one-on-one conferencing in reading because it increases the amount of time kids are away from the teacher and minimizes their accountability.

There are various ways of requiring reading during the time a teacher is busy with another group. The teacher might encourage students to attempt that day's selection on their own before they try to undertake it with the teacher's guidance. The same thing can be done, frankly, with a social studies or science chapter. That permits students to read such texts multiple times.

Another possibility is to teach a writing lesson just prior to starting with reading groups and to have the boys and girls working on their compositions or revisions while the teacher is elsewhere. The same can be done with vocabulary lessons.

However, if students have problems with the work tied to such lessons, the teacher will have to follow up - so it's important that the seatwork not be so demanding that children need teacher help. I've tried this with math, which would be fine if doing the problems wasn't such a big part of the math learning. Teachers really need to be available to take part in that classroom activity, so that pairing wasn't a good one.

Accountability means that the teacher is going to have to closely monitor student success. This can be done several ways - but usually through either follow up discussion (small group or whole class) or writing.
1. Sentence reducing and sentence combining
The best seatwork activities will guide students to engage the meaning of the text more deeply. I suspect this is as true for seatwork as for other pedagogical endeavors. That's why many worksheets and centers simply don't work very well. To complete them it usually isn't necessary to think much about the text.

What kinds of activities fit the bill? Here are a few that can be done with any texts that the students are trying to read. The key is to focus them on key parts of the text or language that you suspect will trip kids up.

Get students to dig into the meaning of sentences by recomposing them. For instance, have them turn these three sentences into one:

"Cities in many countries have special building laws. Buildings must be strong and flexible. That way, they won't collapse during an earthquake." ---->

To keep buildings from collapsing during an earthquake, cities in many countries have special laws that require the buildings to be strong and flexible.

Or, try breaking this sentence down into multiple sentences:

"So Hayleigh began drawing out her ideas to make charms that look like earrings." ---->

Hayleigh draws out her ideas.
2. Cohesion analysis
She makes charms.

The charms look like earrings.
3. Vocabulary and context
Get students to connect the ideas across a text. To track the ideas, students can mark each appearance of an idea with different colors or by some other marking system. Here I have used underlining, italics, and bolding to show the links.

"When disasters such as storms, floods, and earthquakes strike an area, people from all over the world want to help. They know that someday they may need help themselves. They also know that it is the right thing to do and that it is rewarding. I think that when people are in need it is important for all of us to find a way to help out."

Lift some sentences from the text and have the students use the context to figure out the meaning of the underlined word and then have them replace the word with an appropriate synonym or phrase.
4. Text Comparisons
Buildings must be strong and flexible. That way, they won't collapse during an earthquake.

Buildings must be strong and flexible. That way, they won't _fall down_ during an earthquake.

Have students write text comparisons. They can compare today's text with any other text that you have already had them read or that you have read to them. These comparisons might be of something quite specific such as comparing the characters from two stories, or it might be something more all-encompassing like comparing two social studies chapters (comparing two civilizations in grade 4, for instance).
References
Each of these exercises requires that students think deeply about the language of the text that they are trying to understand. These kinds of exercises can be done before or after the students have read the text.

Of course, if they are going to analyze text in those ways successfully, you cannot start out with a seatwork assignment. Initially, you'll need to do these with the boys and girls so that they learn how to do them. In one of Connor's studies on seatwork, this was one of the big take-aways. Kids often don't have any idea how to do the seatwork. Using similar activities throughout the year and preparing students to complete them will make a big difference.

Amendum, S. J., Li, Y., Hall, L. A., Fitzgerald, J., Creamer, K. H., Head-Reeves, D., & Hollingsworth, H. L. (2009). Which reading lesson instruction characteristics matter for early reading achievement? Reading Psychology, 30(2), 119-147. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702710802275173

Block, C. C., Parris, S. R., Reed, K. L., Whiteley, C. S., & Cleveland, M. D. (2009). Instructional approaches that significantly increase reading comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101(2), 262-281. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014319
Click here if you would like to read the 9 comments generated by the original entry.
Connor, C. M., May, H., Sparapani, N., Hwang, J. K., Adams, A., Wood, T. S., . . . Day, S. (2022). Bringing assessment-to-instruction (A2i) technology to scale: Exploring the process from development to implementation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(7), 1495-1532. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000758

Taylor, B. M., Pearson, P. D., Peterson, D. S., & Rodriguez, M. C. (2005). The CIERA School Change Framework: An evidence-based approach to professional development and school reading improvement. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 40-69.

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Seatwork that Makes Sense for Reading | Shanahan on Literacy

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This blog entry describes seatwork activities that have the possibility of improving reading achievement, and not just keeping students busy.

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A Makeshift Raft Speaks to the Risks Cubans Took to Escape Their Homeland

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In the mid-1990s, tens of thousands left in boats or handcrafted floats facing treacherous waters in search of a better life

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Link to original website

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DRAFT Intentional Instruction- Table of Reading Lesson Types

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I plan to use the text set we've created to build knowledge and vocabulary around our chemistry unit in science.

I will use these texts during our common reading time, and hope to find ways to integrate literacy into our short (4-week) science unit.

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I'm going to be more intentional about the texts I choose, and make sure to take the time to read ahead, and have questions ready for the students. I will think about 'why are we reading this' and be more explicit with the students, so they know what we are doing is purposeful.

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It was nice to have time to find text sets that support our class read aloud, as well as alternative novel sets for reading groups.

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Gr 3 want to start using a grade level text (Wild Robot) as a read aloud and teach themes that come out of the text - eg friendships, and growing of relationships. Ideas were discussed on using the second book of the Wild Robot to compare the characters and how the characters change throughout the two books. 

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Gr 3 want to start using a grade level text (Wild Robot) as a read aloud and teach themes that come out of the text - eg friendships, and growing of relationships. Ideas were discussed on using the second book of the Wild Robot to compare the characters and how the characters change throughout the two books. 

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Protecting PLC Time & Purposeful Planning 

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Protecting PLC Time & Purposeful Planning 

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Better use of PLC time to plan with intention with text forward instruction in mind. Build out robust text sets and continually document/reflect (in literacy unit folder or toddle?) how we are integrating these along with the strategies that worked.

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The use of vocab words from the book and looking at what those words mean with students - so a big part of this is going to be pulling out important meaning words from the text.

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The use of vocab words from the book and looking at what those words mean with students - so a big part of this is going to be pulling out important meaning words from the text.

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I am very excited to implement regular 'close reads' in my lessons. I want to try and use books and texts in our Science Units to teach the content through 'big ideas'.

The support I would need is the time in PLC meetings or the Tuesday meetings to continue this planning.

It makes sense to take our learning and training forward in this text rich manner! I hope we can do it!

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I want to ensure students have the necessary background knowledge before introducing a read-aloud or shared text related to our topic. I also want them to have access to differentiated texts that align with our standards and mini-lessons, allowing them to follow along effectively. Having physical copies of these texts will support their engagement and comprehension. Additionally, I’d like to provide extra articles and books for early finishers, which would also create more opportunities to work closely with students who need extra support in applying the skills being taught. I appreciate the time we had as a team to unpack the standards and gather valuable resources for the unit.