Insructional Strategies

One instructional strategy that I find helpful in my special education classroom is instructional grouping. At first I thought it would be more useful in the large classroom and I didn't use it with my smaller groups. Last year I had a group of 5 students who had very similar needs in some areas of reading, but were also in very different places in other areas when it came to reading. So I had the students work together when it came to comprehension and decoding skills, but when we were working on phonemic awareness I broke them into 2 groups of two and an individual. I taught a skill to one group/individual while the other group/individual practiced the skill area that they needed support with. I also supported their different level of needs the same way when it came to building fluency. This strategy allowed me to support the groups needs while working within the same time period, which is important when there are some many needs in our school and so little time!