I have divided my class into five small groups. Each small group is given a color name - green, red, blue, purple, and orange. Green is the lowest group while orange is the highest. Within each group, I try to place students who are the closest in reading ability. For example, everyone reading on a "P" level would be in one group, everyone reading on a "G" level would be placed in another group, and so on. If there are not enough of a level to form a group, I put levels that are close to one another together in a group.
I work with small groups on a daily basis. Even though I have five groups, I only see three groups per day. I see my lowest group (green group) daily. I see the second lowest group four times per week. I only see the other three groups twice a week.
Each group is given a new book based on their level each week. I base the plans on the skills that the students in the group need the most work on. Skills vary from week to week and from group to group.
My campus is blessed to have many different intervention programs. However, this makes it hard to schedule guided reading groups. My solution was to schedule these pull out programs into my guided reading rotations. My campus has a reading interventionist that pulls a small group of students a few times a week. On the days that she pulls these students, I have the interventionist scheduled as one of that group's rotations for the day. For example, the green group is pulled on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday by the interventionist. A sample of this group's rotations can be seen below.
