1

Savannah Smith
Instructional Repertoire Project
TE 803
1/31/16
Part 1:
For this expansion of my instructional repertoire, I propose implementing
differentiated instruction through small group work in my Junior Composition and
Literature classes. Willis and Mann (2000), in Differentiating Instruction Finding
Manageable Ways to Meet Student Needs, discuss how when faced with diverse learners
with many different kinds of needs, there are two options: teaching to the middle or
making ones instruction as diverse as the students in the classroom. Many are moving
towards diversifying, or differentiating, instruction to meet the interests and needs of all
students in the classroom. In my classroom, I am often confronted with the fact that all of
my students are unique in their needs and what they value within the subject of English.
Many have yet to discover what catches their interest in English, so in offering many
avenues and approaches for learning, I hope to facilitate my students discovery of what
kinds of learners they are in the English classroom. Since differentiation of my
instruction is too broad a subject for the confines of this project, I have decided to focus
on one strategy within the realm of differentiated instruction, one that is still posing a
challenge for me in relation to student engagement and meaning-makingsmall group
work. Willis and Mann (2000) agree that one way of differentiating instruction is by
vary[ing] whole-class instruction by teaching small groups and that [s]tudents can be
grouped based on readiness, interest, or learning profile. I hope to investigate not just
one type of small group work, but different contexts in which groups should be based on
the three categories above (readiness, interest, or learning profile).

In general, a main issue I am dealing with in the classroom is student engagement

in meaning-making activities related to literary analysis of texts. I often see a general lack
of participation when it comes to activities in which I ask more open-ended, investigative
questions. These questions are the most crucial to learning the important close reading
strategies that are emphasized in standardized testing, but are also highly important to
obtaining the skill of critical thinking. For instance, in having students perform an
intervention on a character in a novel, I had many different levels of disengagement going
on at once. Those that had read and were enjoying the book would contribute a few times,
but they would also get tired of carrying the conversation. Those that had not read and did
not know what was going on in the book were prone to completely tuning out the activity.
Those that had read, but felt that English was not their strong suit, would only contribute
when I hinted that I would make students stay after the bell had rung. I believe that
differentiated instruction via small group work could be a remedy to this lack of
engagement in literary analysis activities. Weinstein and Novodvorsky (2015) discuss
how research has shown that [c]ooperative groups promote greater efforts to achieve,
more positive relationships, and greater psychological health than competitive or
individualistic efforts in middle school. Within my high school classroom, there are
many issues of student engagement, including motivation (i.e., many students know
exactly how low their grade can sink while still getting the D- necessary to receive credit
for the class), positive student-student and student-teacher relationships, along with a
great fear of being perceived by others as wrong or unintelligent. I have employed many
strategies in the past in an attempt to foster a safer space and feeling of comfort among
my students, but it is clear that many of them do not feel that school is a place where that

experience can occur. There have, however, been some very insightful days in every
single one of my classes, so I know that the safe space is possible. If small group work
can provide me with the tools necessary to help students explore their strengths and
interests as learners, along with promoting all of the benefits noted above in an attempt to
create a safe space where meaning-making can happen, then it is my duty to attempt this
practice.
In Keys to Successful Group Work: Culture, Structure, Nurture, Allen (2012)
also discusses the importance of students learning to see each person in the classroom as
an important resource. Although she is specifically discussing small group work in a
mathematics context, much of what she says applies to small group work in any context,
including that of English. Allen goes on to say that [a]ll students have the opportunity to
expand their own thinking by embracing ideas and strategies beyond their own. For
instance, [h]igh-achieving students learn to place less value on quickly finding the
correct answers, whereas struggling students experience less isolation and gain more
confidence. This means that all students can be challenged and gain important
knowledge from one another, regardless of whether they are perceived as highachieving or low-achieving. My high-achieving students often vocalize that they are
tired of answering questions, while the low-achieving students are fearful of answering,
contributing, attempting activities, etc. Oftentimes when discussing differentiated
instruction, it is geared towards helping those who are lower-achieving find confidence,
but it is important to remember that high-achieving students still have many things to
learn, too, including having their ideas challenged and strengthened. If I can construct
small group situations in which all students are challenged, then I think this will further

the engagement and confidence of all students, even those who are getting frustrated by
the fact that they are learning the content at a quicker rate.
My instructional goals include two specific areas: helping students to explicitly
learn the skills of meaning-making in relation to reading and analyzing texts, along with
heightening student motivation and engagement in this specific area. Meaning-making in
analysis is completely reliant on bringing in the literacies of students, since the students
themselves are making the meaning and connections, rather than the teacher. Therefore,
differentiating this experience will be highly important, since it will rely on the students
as individuals. I believe that doing this at the small group level will allow me to
orchestrate student meaning-making based on students reading comprehension skills,
along with their literacies. Meaning-making cannot occur, however, if students are not
engaged and motivated to think to make connections and revelations to the text.
Therefore, I strive to craft small group activities that foster the community necessary for
students to feel comfortable thinking out loud with one another. At the same time, these
activities will put responsibility and duty on every member of the group, so that there is
an equal and productive distribution of the work that makes students feel validated in
their learning.
In facilitating differentiated small group activities, I hope to see a heightened level
of engagement and motivation in my students, which many scholars, including those
mentioned above, have shown to be possible in the classroom. This engagement should
be paired with a heightened sense of comfort in speaking with other students in the
classroom, and a lessened sense of anxiety over being wrong or feeling like the only one
talking. The positive relationships formed in small groups could extend to whole-class

activities, and therefore, all students could feel much more comfortable doing the
learning talk necessary to make meaning while analyzing important texts in the
classroom. Through this learning talk, participation and contribution in classroom
activities of all kinds could be strengthened and enriched because the students will be
making insights of their own, rather than asking the teacher for all of the answers.

References
Allen, K.C. (2012). Keys to successful group work: culture, structure, nurture. The
Mathematics Teacher, 106 (4), 308-312. doi: 10.5951/mathteacher.106.4.0308
Weinstein, C. S., & Novodvorksy, I. (2015). Classroom management: Lessons from
research and practice (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Willis, S., & Mann, L. (2000, Winter). Differentiating instruction finding manageable
ways to meet individual needs. Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculumupdate/winter2000/Differentiating-Instruction.aspx.

Savannah Smith
TE 803
Part II:
For my attempt to provide differentiated small group work based on what Willis
and Mann (2000) distinguish as readiness, interest, or learning profile, there will be
many steps I need to take in order to make sure that my students can flourish in the small
group setting: defining clear group member roles, organizing students in ways most
effective for the task at hand, and crafting group work that fosters collaboration among
students. All three of these steps will help maintain student engagement as I facilitate
these small group activities because the students will have agency over the roles they take
on in the groups, the organization of groups will be tailored to the needs and interests of
the students, and all students will be held accountable for the success of the group at
large. First of all, in order to facilitate small group work that is differentiated to every
students needs and allows each student to see each person in the classroom as an
important resource, Allen (2012) suggests that I define roles for group work and
distribute them so as to mediate potential imbalances. Weinstein and Novodvorsky
(2015) and Vaughn et al. (2011) echo the importance of student roles in group work
situations, although they define different roles by different terms. Allen (2012), instead of
having teacher-created roles for students, suggests having [w]hole class discussions,
including role playing, about what groups will look like if each person takes responsibility for his or
her role in the collective work for the best success in group work with roles. It is clear that having
specific roles for each student in a group is crucial to the success of group work, and I have tried this
in the past.

Prior to this project, I defined the different roles that students would play, but the
students were able to pick which role they would like to perform. Some groups took the
roles seriously, but others still let certain group members pick up their slack and take on
more than one role, which I observed as I monitored their progress on the literary analysis
activity at hand. Having some class discussions about what are the struggles of group
work, along with what the different roles would look like to students would be helpful for
many reasons. First, student-generated roles foster responsibility, as Allen (2015)
discusses, and this links directly back to motivation and engagement. If my students are
the ones who decide the terms and stipulations for every role in a given group, then they
have to take responsibility for the criteria that they are supposed to meet. If they do not,
then there is no room for them to have been confused or unaware of what they were
supposed to be doing, since they were the ones who created the roles. Also, these roles
can become a classroom norm, and if the roles become an agreed-to norm, then the
students can participate in habitual group work and reap the benefits on a regular basis.
Therefore, I will facilitate class discussions on what in small groups should be.
Both Weinstein and Novodvorksy (2015) and Vaughn et al. (2011) offer up some
potential suggestions I could give my students for different options of roles. Weinstein
and Novodorsky (2015) suggest roles such as materials person, timekeeper, recorder,
facilitator, [and] reporter, and I have actually used these kinds of roles by different
names in the past (such as scribe for the recorder and orator for the reporter). I
think the additional roles of materials person and timekeeper could be very powerful
because my students struggle with time management and losing their papers. I will
suggest these two roles, but perhaps with additional responsibilities, so that even the

materials person and the timekeeper have to take part in the meaning making of
literary analysis. Vaughn, et al. (2011) in Efficacy of Collaborative Strategic Reading
With Middle School Students, propose a new model of reading done in small groups
which heavily relies on defined group roles, as well. Some of the roles suggested in this
paradigm include: leader, clunk expert, gist expert, and question expert, along with
encourager and timekeeper...as needed. In this paradigm, the clunks are the parts of a
text that students do not understand, and the gist is the main idea of the text. I think the
roles provided here would be more effective at the high school level because although
similar to Weinstein and Novodvorksys (leader being like facilitator, and both
having a timekeeper), they require a certain amount of analysis by all members
involved. For instance, someone is responsible for knowing what the group as a whole
does not understand (the clunks), while someone else is responsible for knowing the
gist. These kinds of roles would also help the teacher as facilitator because the roles
demand acknowledgment of confusion and questions. This is crucial to my students, who
often will not ask for help or offer up confusion because of the aforementioned lack of
motivation or fear of being judged. I will use the examples from both of these educational
resources to offer suggestions to the students, since they may not know where to start
with defining group roles.
After each class defines the roles that the students would like to perform when
working in small groups, I will make sure that we have giant sticky notes with the roles
for each hour on there, so that there is a visual for the new classroom routine. Weinstein
and Novodvorksy (2015) state that routines need to be taught explicitly, and my
students know to expect visual reminders when I teach anything. Since I am introducing

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this routine later in the year, I want to make sure that my students have reminders without
me having to reiterate the roles every single time that we do small group work from now
on. Also, incorporating roles from each class in the classroom space for everyone to see
will help students take ownership of their specific class period, which helps reinforce the
uniquely safe space that my students and I have co-created.
Creating habitual, differentiated small group work with a high level of student
engagement will also take a lot of organization behind the scenes on my part. I will, first
and foremost, need to assess whether the literary analysis activity is one that requires
students being organized by student skill-level, social relations, or literacies. Willis and
Mann (2000) emphasize the students as learners and advise that [a] teacher might group
students with a similar readiness level (e.g., for reading instruction) or with a dissimilar
one (e.g., to discuss a book they all love). It is important to see the students not just as
vesicles for important standards-based skills, but as human beings bringing their own
ideas to the table, so both of these groupings are important. The authors do not, however,
include the social aspect in their groupings of students, but it is highly important for my
students, since many of them have social anxiety and stick to a few close friends. There is
a time for students to branch out, but this only comes after the safe space in small group
work has been established. At first, I will organize the groups based on skill-level or
interest depending on the amount of higher-order thinking in the activity, keeping in mind
the social aspect and the roles each class has established. If there is more close reading
being done, I will create groups based on skill-level, so that all students can analyze as far
as they can go without being overwhelmed, slowed-down, or shut-down by those at a
different level. If it is more of a reflective, opinion-based analysis, in which we connect

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the text to our own lives, I will organize based on the interests of my students. Depending
on the students comfort level, I may even assign specific roles to each person in every
group with their permission. This is all part of the process of scaffolding the students
towards small group work being a routine that is done in class each week to analyze texts
and make meaning in a safe environment.
The final piece of the differentiated small groups is the kind of group work that
will be done. My students feel more comfortable when there are clear guidelines and
rules set in activities, along with both spoken and written instructions, so I have decided
to employ what Weinstein and Novodvorsky (2015) call cooperative group work, in
which [s]tudents share a common goal or end, and some division of responsibilities
can occur. For my students, since I am employing member roles, I believe that having
the divide and conquer strategy will be the most effective, since different students will
have different purposes in the group. In order to ensure individual accountability and
interdependence as Weinstein and Novodvorsky (2015) highly emphasize, I will craft
analysis activities in such a way that each group member will have a piece of the puzzle
that works towards the main goal, whether that is that it is a jigsaw situation, in which
every person has to explain part of a passage, each member has a different question to
focus on to come to a unified conclusion, or it is required to record an insight from every
group member. Creating group work in which all members are held accountable for
working towards a single goal will obtain and maintain student engagement, since if one
member fails to do their part, all students will lose points.
In order to prepare for the kind of interdependence my students will face in small
groups, I will continue to create dialogic whole-class discussions in which different

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people have different contributions to make. I have already done work in differentiating
what any given student analyzes in an example SAT essay, for instance. I also make
progress checks on many assignments by stamping how far students have gotten by a
certain time in class, and that is often how they receive their participation for the activity.
By making every student accountable in whole-group discussion, whether they speak
aloud or not, I think this will help scaffold and model the kinds of work they will be
expected to do in small groups. I will also keep a lot of the personal accountability
practices the same, including things such as differentiated analysis and the stamping
process, so that students feel a continuity in the practices of the class.

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References
Allen, K.C. (2012). Keys to successful group work: culture, structure, nurture. The
Mathematics Teacher, 106 (4), 308-312. doi: 10.5951/mathteacher.106.4.0308
Vaughn, S., et al. (2011). Efficacy of collaborative strategic reading with middle school
students.American Educational Research Journal, 48(4), 938-964. Retrieved from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27975316.
Weinstein, C. S., & Novodvorksy, I. (2015). Classroom management: Lessons from
research and practice (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Willis, S., & Mann, L. (2000, Winter). Differentiating instruction finding manageable
ways to meet individual needs. Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculumupdate/winter2000/Differentiating-Instruction.aspx.

Savannah Smith

14

TE 803
Part III:
In looking back at my video footage, I see that I modified my implementation of the
small group work in several ways. First of all, in our explicit discussion of group work
and roles, we started with a chalk talk about what we liked and disliked about group
work, so that we could work on problem-solving the issues that my students had in each
classroom. Also, instead of prompting them towards specific student-centered roles, I
simply let them come up with what they thought they needed, which meant I was opening
myself up to being more than a facilitator. Although this diverted from my original action
plan, it still falls under what Allen (2012) would call a whole-class discussion about what
roles in small groups would be and look like. The students actually were able to come up
with roles that they wanted to see in groups very easily, such as someone to write down
the answers, and someone to speak out, for instance. Some students wanted to eliminate
group work altogether, and some wanted to work individually and have everyone add
their work together, but the rest of the students agreed that these solutions would not
actually enhance their learning. Some trends in the kinds of roles that students came up
with were having someone write down the answers in a coherent way, someone that kept
everyone on track with time, and someone who would keep everyone organized. In every
class, we wrote the group roles on big sticky notes.
One interesting change that came up was completely due to the students ideas. Not
only did we come up with roles, but rather we discussed some ground rules for how
students would conduct themselves in group work. Since Weinstein and Novodvorksy (2015)
emphasize that all routines, no matter where they fall in the year, need to be taught explicitly, I
thought this was a really important discussion to have. A lot of students wanted a rule about

15

respecting one another, along with a rule about everyone having to contribute to the work
that went on. Some classes even wanted to be able to evaluate each other based on how
well each member in the group performed. I agreed that these were important norms to
establish, and we wrote those down on the big sticky notes, as well. All in all, the class
discussions about group work were very successful and showed a surprising level of
metacognition on the part of my students. Instead of jumping right into a small group
activity, we let the discussion about group work be an activity in itself, and let the small
group work rest for a while.
The students had their first foray into small group work using the new norms when
we analyzed The Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga. The students had already read the
story as a class and answered comprehension questions. Then, in small groups, they were
to answer some higher-order thinking questions about the story in at least three questions.
The students explicitly asked to be allowed to make their own small groups, so I modified
my action plan yet again and permitted this to happen. I was sure, however, to warn the
students that they would have to accomplish all of the work for the day in a timely
manner to receive a good grade. I reviewed the new norms in relation to small group
work with the students, including the different roles and the ground rules. As they were
working on these analysis questions, I circulated the room, simply observing their work.
Many were not completing the task in a complete manner, so I stepped in and re-directed
all of them to the directions at the top of the sheet. I also clarified some of the analysis
questions when there was confusion. I asked that the member from each group that had
taken on the equivalent of the leader position come up and conference with me about how
each group was doing on time. Only when they explicitly asked for more time did I add

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five more minutes to our countdown timer projected on the board. From the beginning, I
decided to construct the activities in a way that fostered personal responsibility, so that
the students knew that I was serious about them being in charge of their own work.
In grading the assignment, I noticed that many students had not done their small
group work completely. The assignment asked for at least three sentences, and in many
groups, all members put down a sentence or less for each question. The insights and
thinking were there, and I could see them moving towards doing a close reading of a text,
but I had wanted them to get some practice in extending their writing, and by proxy,
extending their thinking. I discussed what had happened with my mentor teacher, and we
both agreed that it had been very important for the students to see that they needed their
teacher to provide some more structure and that they needed to understand the
consequences of their decisions. My mentor teacher assured me that I had been very
explicit in what students had needed to do, and I had not used any confusing or
ambiguous language. In order to help the students learn that lesson, my mentor and I
decided to give the assignment the points the work deserved so that the students would
truly understand that they needed to have personal responsibility in group work. I
established the criteria for full points, and they did not meet it, so they needed to
understand that my criteria and their small group norms were taken seriously. After that, I
had to pause on making group work more elaborate and student-driven, as I had
originally been planning to try. It was necessary that I re-establish the norm of following
directions such as, write three sentences, when the teacher explains them orally and has
them written visually on the assignment sheet.
The next round of small group work that I implemented, I chose the groups for the

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students, and the activity itself was far more structured. They knew their grades on the
last small group assignment, which were typically in the D to C range, and I did not meet
resistance from them about me constructing the groups. We were reading Because I
could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson. The lesson took two days to complete. I
started the students working as individuals on individual stanzas of this poem. They were
to give a brief 3-5 sentence analysis of the tone, personification, and extended metaphor
found in the stanza. Then, they were given time to come together with other people that
had been assigned their same stanza to check for comprehension. Finally, they were put
into jigsaw small groups, and each student had to present their findings to people who
had not studied that stanza in-depth. By the end, each student was to have a sheet of
paper with at least three sentences about each stanzas tone and use of personification and
extended metaphor. The lesson culminated in the groups drawing a visual for the meaning
of the poem on a large sticky note.
This two-day lesson was highly successful. A majority of students completed
everything they needed to do in relation to analyzing the stanzas. Also, they were highly
engaged in the act of drawing the meaning of the poem, and when they presented their
pictures, every person in the group was successfully able to add to the overall
explanation. Prior to this activity, I often had issues with student engagement and
participation when it came to something that the students had to present to the class, but
this time, since they had all agreed to the rule that everyone must contribute and play a
part, no one had an excuse to not help present. I was very impressed by my students
participation that day. Prior to completing the task, we went over small group roles and
norms yet again, and we also went over the instructions several times. I also think that the

18

fact that the quarter was ending contributed to students taking care to get full points for
the activity. Either way, there was an increase in everyones grade on this project versus
the last one which corresponded to the increase in engagement and participation from the
students.
The second round of group work aligned more closely with what I had initially
intended with my action plan. I incorporated the cooperative and interdependent group
work, in which the work is divided, but there is a common goal, since the students each had to give
their analysis of a given stanza in order to understand the complete poem, and they had to demonstrate
that they all understood the meaning of the poem (Weinstein and Novodvorsky 2015). I saw that the
students were not ready to pick their own groups after the results of the previous try at small group
work, so I grouped the students based on both readiness level (different stanzas had different levels
of complexity), and then by dissimlar readiness level, basing the jigsaw groups on who students felt
comfortable working with, which are both methods of differentiating in small groups that Willis and
Mann (2000) discuss. All in all, I saw that incorporating several types of group work in a larger, more
structured process promoted higher student engagement and an increased level of higher-order
thinking from all students.

References

19

Allen, K.C. (2012). Keys to successful group work: culture, structure, nurture. The
Mathematics Teacher, 106 (4), 308-312. doi: 10.5951/mathteacher.106.4.0308
Weinstein, C. S., & Novodvorksy, I. (2015). Classroom management: Lessons from
research and practice (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Willis, S., & Mann, L. (2000, Winter). Differentiating instruction finding manageable
ways to meet individual needs. Association for Supervision and Curriculum
Development. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/curriculumupdate/winter2000/Differentiating-Instruction.aspx.

Savannah Smith
TE 803

20

Part IV:
For this expansion of my instructional repertoire, I had hoped to join different small
group strategies with attempts at differentiation for my students. I wanted to apply these
strategies in the context of literary analysis because often my students are very hesitant to
answer more open-ended questions about a given text. This was due in part to some
students not feeling confident in their skills, some not being prepared, and some finding
carrying an entire situation tedious. I believed that incorporating differentiated small
group work for analyzing texts at a deeper level may give my students a lower-stakes
activity than having a whole-group discussion. It also has been shown to foster respect
and engagement among all students because students learn to see each other as resources
and rely on one another. This, in turn, would lead to students having to participate and do
their share of the work for everyone to be able to be successful. For these reasons, group
work intertwined with differentiation for literary analysis seemed to be the best direction
for this investigation.
The main strategies I was hoping to employ were to have the students in each class
decide on the roles they wanted every small group to contain. That way, they could take
ownership over their small group activities. I also wanted students to perform several
small group activities that incorporated literary analysis over a few weeks to get
acclimated to the new classroom norms. These activities would vary in structure and
groupings. The students would start with highly structured groups that the teacher
selected, mainly based on skill level. Then, as students became more confident in their
own analysis abilities, students would have more open activities and be free to choose
their own groups. In this way, I was hoping to see a heightened level of engagement,

21

personal responsibility, and confidence in my students when it came to going deeper than
the surface level of a given text.
In the execution of these small group strategies, I modified my plans in order to
allow for students to take more ownership from the beginning. My students, along with
wanting to choose roles, also wanted to agree on some ground rules about how students
would behave and contribute in the small group setting. I allowed this to happen, and we
wrote both the roles and the rules on a large sticky note so that students would have a
constant visual of the new norms they had agreed upon. Then, in the first couple of
activities we did, the students asked if they could choose their own groups. I permitted
this, saying that students would have to accept the benefits and the consequences of their
actions. There was a lot of distraction on the part of my students because they had
obviously chosen group members for social reasons, but I refused to redirect their
attention, and I only gave a few time checks.
After the difficulties found with the simpler activities with student-chosen small
groups, some of the students realized that I could be a resource for them because I
enhanced their learning by choosing group members that would benefit them
academically, while keeping track of who they enjoyed being with socially. I chose the
groups in the later, more complex activities, and the students were receptive to that. As
the activities became more complex and demanding for each individual student, they
appreciated having students at their level at the comprehension stage and students of
varying skill-levels in the analysis stage. For instance, the students were to analyze a
single stanza from Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson for tone,
personification, and extended metaphor. I assigned different stanzas to different students

22

based on comprehension skills. They had time to work individually, and afterward, met
with the other people that were assigned the same stanza to make sure everyone
understood. After making sure they understood their stanza, students were in jigsaw
groups that I assigned based on varying skill-levels and the social dynamics of the class,
and each student had to present the meaning of their stanza. This was a chance for every
student to feel valued because they alone had the information for that stanza, and if they
were not confident in their analysis, the jigsaw group made a poster as a whole that
demonstrated their interpretation of the poem as a whole, so there was an opportunity to
shine visually. In this two-day process, the students appreciated having me picking the
groups, and since I was explicit about the process, the students were more on-task and
economical with their time.
In looking back over the student work from the various small group activities that
were executed, the beginning few in which students were able to choose their groups
were often incomplete, and even students that typically excel, if they were in a group that
had chosen collectively to not be attentive to directions and time, did poorly on the
assignments. For instance, on a question that asked for a three-sentence response, if one
person in a group answered in only one sentence, the rest of the group typically did, too.
This indicates that the small groups were working as a collective, but it is unclear if they
were collectively letting one person do the work, or if they had come up with that answer
together. In the later activities in which each student had to work individually at first, and
each student had a piece of the information to himself or herself, and I had chosen the
groups myself, the assessments were far more complete. Everyone paid attention to the
details of the directions, they finished on time for the most part, and the interpretations

23

they were able to put together were in-depth and referenced several parts of a given text.
For these reasons, it was clear that when they put all of their ideas together, they were
able to work towards a far more complete analysis. Whether they were motivated solely
by the structures I put in place or the desire to receive a higher score is unclear, but I
think it was, in part, due to the way I had crafted the later activities.
In general, my students have learned to take some more ownership of their learning
due to our small group work discussion because they will now ask me questions about
changing the logistics of activities. It is refreshing to see them honing in on the agency
that they have in the classroom. They also have learned the importance of following
directions and attending to explanations from the teachers, since they know I am not
constantly going to be reminding them or answering their questions. They still struggle
with managing time on their own, and they still need me to be constantly monitoring their
work (I reverted back to this method during the jigsaw activity, for instance). They
struggle with personal responsibility, but have at least learned that I write the directions
down on the board and on their assignment sheets for a reason, so this is progress. A lot
of them have learned that they actually do have good opinions about what a text means,
as shown by the questions I received about an interpretation by students that are typically
silent. All in all, these attempts at small group were worthwhile and helpful for the
students.
Some key aspects I would change about my implementation of these small group
activities would be to start with the highly-structured activities in which I choose the
groups, as I had mentioned in my implementation plan. The students choosing their own
groups at first did no one any favors. Learning new roles and taking on the responsibility

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of choosing who should be in those roles was not a productive process because many of
the students chose to be with their friends and did not choose people for the roles, so they
completed the tasks ineffectively. I would assign groups and roles initially, so students
could be scaffolded into their personal responsibility. I would keep the same level of
structure in the activities, perhaps maintaining the jigsaw format throughout so that every
student was responsible for a piece of the information, but let students have more choice
for who they are working with and what roles they will take on. This way, there would be
no inequality in work distribution, but the students would still have some choice that they
were able to earn when they were ready. They would initially get to choose their own
roles in the group, and the final step would be for them to choose the groups. This
scaffolding would help students feel less confused and finish tasks in a complete manner.