Mastering Small Groups and Literacy Centers: A Science of Reading Approach

In episode 129 of "Educate and Rejuvenate: The Podcast," Malia Hollowell sheds light on the importance of small groups in the science of reading classroom. With over 67% of 4th graders in the United States reading below grade level, implementing effective small groups becomes crucial. Malia is a science of reading expert and emphasizes the significance of aligning small group instruction with the science of reading principles. Let's delve deeper into the strategies and tips discussed in the episode.

Resources mentioned:

• Get your tickets to Educate & Rejuvenate
• The Science of Reading In Action by Malia Hollowell
• Educate & Rejuvenate: A Three-Step Guide to Revitalize Your Teaching, Renew Your Spirit, and Reignite Your Passion For Life 

Connect with Malia:

• The Reading Road Map Course
• Instagram- playdough2plato
• Free Phonological Awareness Daily Warm-Ups

Connect with Kelsey:

• Follow her on Instagram @educateandrejuvenate.
• Join our Facebook group: Wife Teacher Mommies Unite.
• Follow on Pinterest for more helpful resources.
• Preorder Kelsey’s book- Educate & Rejuvenate: A Three-Step Guide to Revitalize Your Teaching, Renew Your Spirit, and Reignite Your Passion For Life

You are listening to episode number 129 of

educate and rejuvenate the podcast. Small groups in the science

of reading classroom with Malia Hollowell. Did you know that

over 67% of 4th graders in the United

States read below grade level? That is why today, I

brought on science of reading expert, Malia Hollowell, from PLATO to

PLATO to share how we can implement small groups in the

classroom, both how to effectively teach the small groups and

manage the rest of the students in their literacy centers,

all while keeping the science of reading in mind.

Welcome to educate and rejuvenate, the podcast to help you revitalize

your teaching, renew your spirit, and reignite your passion for

life. I'm your host, Kelsey Sorensen, a former teacher,

current homeschool mom, published author, and certified life coach. Whether you

are a teacher in a traditional classroom, homeschool from your kitchen table,

or anywhere in between, I am on a mission to help you not only survive

as an educator, but thrive. Get ready to up level your

skills with incredible insights from guest experts and discover the

missing piece, rejuvenating yourself. Are you ready to

both educate and rejuvenate? Let's

go. Let me tell you, it has been a little bit of a challenge to

rewire my brain into saying educate and rejuvenate the podcast

instead of wife, teacher, mommy the podcast. But I've been so excited about this

rebrand, and I'm so glad that everybody who we've gotten feedback from

has been all in with it too and excited about it. I just think it'll

be so much more inclusive for everybody and really describes what we're doing here, which

is helping you to both learn and educate

your students or your children or whoever you're teaching

and rejuvenate yourself. Because before we can be the most effective

educator we can be, we need to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves

too. And that's what I, as a certified life coach, am really the

most passionate about. But I also love bringing on experts

on topics that can help you uplevel your skills as

a teacher as well. So today, I brought on Malia

Hollowell, who I am so excited to have on the show. I followed her on

Instagram for a long time and actually Pinterest even before that. And now I'm

publishing my book using the same publisher that she used, Teacher Goals

Publishing. And she released her best selling book, The

Science of Reading in Action. And shortly after I signed

my book deal with Teacher Goals Publishing, I was like, I should probably grab her

book and kinda see, like, what the quality of the actual book is like and

the layout and kinda the length and what they're expecting a little bit. But when

I read her book, I was like, this is so good. I feel like it

just breaks down the strategies of the science of reading, the

research behind it, how you can implement it in a not so

overwhelming way. She also includes a ton of really

great resources for free for everybody who has her book, and those really

show that she knows what she's talking about when it comes to the science of

reading. And that's why I'm so excited that she's here today on the educate

and rejuvenate podcast to share her knowledge with you

right here, so stay tuned. We have had a lot of questions on

the podcast about small groups. And when Malia

submitted her form on different things she could talk about, of course, the science of

reading is on there, but she also has small groups. And that has just been

brought up a whole lot. And I thought, why not talk

about both on today's episode of the podcast? And so

that's what we're doing for you today. We brought it for you. You're gonna get

get some really great tips on how to help your kids learn phonics, help them

learn the science of reading, how to start your small groups

or revamp them, and how to manage the other kids while you're doing your small

groups. So good. And I'm also really excited because Malia is one

of our speakers at educate and rejuvenate this year. She'll be sharing a little bit

more about what she's talking about, but it has to do with small groups and

the science of reading. I am so excited that she's speaking educate and rejuvenate this

year. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, if you're new here, educate and

rejuvenate is our virtual conference. Well and, actually, it's the whole brand

now. But, originally, that name was just for our virtual conference. So we

are in our 3rd summer virtual conference. We

have thousands of teachers joining us every time. It is so much fun.

And Malia is on with all of our reading sessions and so

excited that she said yes. I was thrilled that we got her as a speaker

this year. So all of our attendees are in for a treat with that, and

you're all in for a treat on the podcast here today too. Okay. So before

we get into today's interview, I'm going to share Malia's bio

with you. Malia Hollowell is here so that 67%

of 4th graders in the US won't read below grade level

anymore. It doesn't have to be that way. Malia is on a mission to

empower teachers with the science backed, brain friendly tools and

strategies that they need to help all children learn to become

thriving readers. She is a national board certified

teacher, author of The Science of Reading in Action, and the founder of the

groundbreaking 4 week course called The Reading Roadmap.

Okay. Let's get into today's interview.

Emily, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. How are

you? I am doing great. How are you? Good. We are so excited to

have you on the show today talking all about small groups

and the science of reading. How we can tie that into it as well. But

before we dive in, can you tell us a little bit about how you started

out? How you got so passionate about teaching about reading,

and just a little bit about yourself. Yes. I

actually started teaching back in 2003, And it was

my very first day of school. I will never forget, I was in my 2nd

grade classroom, and I was so excited because I

loved teaching reading. And I assumed all of my 2nd graders were

going to be walking into my doors on that very first day of school

reading fluently. And we would just get to dive into magic treehouse books and all

the books I loved. But what I quickly discovered was that more

than half of them were really struggling to connect the dots,

and they had a difficult time reading very simple words

like cat and dog. And then, unfortunately, I had an elementary

ed degree, but I'd only had one literacy class in

my teacher prep program. And that class could basically

be summed up with a single sentence, which is put good books in kids'

hands, and they will figure out the rest. So to say that I had no

idea how to help them is an understatement. I had no idea

how help them. And I felt like a failure that 1st

year of teaching. I dreaded parent teacher conferences because I knew I

was failing their kids. And I decided right then and

there that I was going to figure out this thing called reading, and I have

been obsessed with it ever since. I've spent the last 2 decades

researching and optimizing and figuring out a system that

works and helps kids learn to read the easier brain friendly way.

And I'm excited to share some of those things with you today. Well, we're

so excited to hear them. And I will also mention that she has an

incredible book. It's called The Science of Reading in Action, which I read and I

was like, this is so good. So you should all definitely grab that. Today, we're

chatting about small groups. So how do you recommend getting started with or

revamping? Let's say they're doing small groups. I've had a lot of people

in our community say like, small groups they're just a disaster. You

know? And then what do I do with the other kids and

everything? Or, like, then sometimes new teachers, like, don't even know how to get

started with small groups. So either way, how do you recommend getting started with or

revamping small reading groups? Well, let's talk about this in 2

different buckets. So let's talk about small groups first, and then I'm happy to give

you tips on literacy centers because that is a whole other ball of

wax. But for small groups, my number one tip

is to create groups based on students' needs. And what I mean

by that is we often give beginning of

year assessments. So we will test students and see what

kind of phonics skills they know. And that is really powerful

information for us because we can take students who are

working on similar skills, and we can put them into small groups.

So we always want our small groups to be based on student need.

Once we sort students, it's kind of like sorting Skittles. If you were sorting

Skittles, you put all your reds together and all your greens together and then all

of your yellows. So once we have our students sorted into

groups based on their need, then we can save a ton of

time because we can create just a couple of

lessons. So we can pull out a digraph lesson for the kids who

need to digraphs, and And we can pull out a blend lesson for

kids who need to work on blends. But we're not having to create 25

personalized, individualized lessons. So sorting kids by

need is gonna be our number one tip. I

love I love that. I think that just makes it so much more helpful than,

like, I think a lot of teachers when we get started, and we think we

need to meet all these students, we think, oh, like, 25 different lessons or

whatever. And we we don't need to do that. If you can group the kids

by level, it helps so so much.

So how, when you do this, do you keep, like, science of reading in

mind? So there are so many different, tips and tricks

that you see floating around on the Internet. But I'd say if I could just

pick a top three top three tips and tweaks that you

can make to make your lessons more science of reading aligned. Number

1, practice phonics every single day. The research is

really clear that for most students, especially our struggling readers,

they need to be practicing those phonics skills that they're learning every

single day in order to make it all

stick. When you're teaching a lesson on the c h, we want

to have kids then practice c h words by

writing down words like chip and chat. And

we're gonna have them play games. You can make really

fun games for them, even using a simple game like tic tac toe.

Have each child pick a c h word out of a little bowl, and then

that will be their x or their O, and they're competing against each other to

try and get 3 in a row. You can have kids read

CH passages, So stories that are filled with different CH

words. There are just a ton of different options for us, but the most important

thing is we want kids to be practicing those phonics skills every

single day. So, that's tip number 1. Tip number 2 is to

practice phonological awareness every day. And just

in case that term is new to you, I'm gonna give you a little tip

that will help it stick. So, phonological starts

with fawn, which sounds a lot like phone. So when we're on

the phone talking to a friend, we hear them talking to

us. So when we're practicing phonological awareness, we

are hearing the sounds in words and they could be big

word parts, like an entire word. We could say, how many words are

in a sentence? I can read. That would be I can read.

So that could be 3 words. Or it could be very, very small word

parts, like the individual sounds and words. For example, I

might say to you, how many sounds do you hear in bun?

Buh n. So that's 3. So we can practice phonological awareness

with big word parts or small, but we wanna practice it every day

because research has shown that kids have this

natural superpower for spoken language. And we want to use that

to our advantage. We want to help them develop the

parts of their brain they need to be able to hear the sounds and words

so that when it comes time to connect those sounds to the letters that are

used to spell them, the process is really simple. And just by

having them practice every day, they're gonna be able to create all of

those brain tools in their brain that they need to be able to do that.

So that's tip number 2. Okay. I love those tips. Did you say there were

2 tips or 3? Well, I did say 3. You did say 3. Yeah. You

can keep going. I'm like, I wanna hear all of them. I'm like,

I remembered. That was really good. I'm impressed.

Okay. So tip number 3 is we I mentioned this earlier. We

really wanna make sure that students are reading

text that includes the phonics skills they're practicing. Tip number 3

is taking a look at the books that you're having kids read, and

check to see if those books are actually filled with the

words that they are working on. If you are using leveled readers, if you are

using Fontus and Pinnell, if you're using most of the books

that are in classrooms right now, and they're called leveled books,

you likely have books that are filled with a huge

range of different spelling rules and phonics rules.

Every single page is a different smorgasbord of stuff.

And that is just too confusing for brand new readers. They really need us

to be intentional about what we're having them practice. So, tip number 3

is take a look at your books and just double

check that they actually are matching the lessons that you're teaching. I

love that because, yeah, I feel like a lot of the books in the

classroom, like, that I used were those books. They were the leveled readers.

And it was after, like, after I wasn't even teaching anymore, once I've

been homeschooling when I read your book. And I'm like, oh, wow. Like, this is

different. But I realized that there were things I was doing, but there was just

part that I wasn't, and it clicked. And I feel like using those strategies

with my kids, I'm like, okay. This is what we needed to be doing all

along. Well, and that's what it's all about, really. Research has

has shown that only 25% of teacher training

programs actually provide teachers the knowledge they

need to teach all of the essential brain friendly

tools and strategies they need to teach reading effectively. And so

if only 25% of our teachers are graduating with the knowledge

they need, that obviously demonstrates that so many of us,

you and me included, were just not empowered to be successful. So

it's no wonder that we found reading to be such a struggle. Oh, for sure.

And then the one thing I want to add too, like, as a life coach

myself, I've seen a lot of teachers, then they feel, like, guilt or they feel

bad, like, I did it wrong or whatever. And like you said, if

you don't have that training, if you don't know what you're supposed to be doing,

then of course, we're all doing the best we can with the information that we

have. Right? And it's also going to take time to learn

like new strategies too. So just make sure that if you're listening to this and

you're like, oh, I've been using those leveled readers or I've been doing this. I

mean, I even have resources I've made, like, for my TPT store 10 years ago.

Then I'm like, oh, yeah. That is not science of reading aligned. Or just like

friendly with it, you know. So it's like, we don't need to

give ourselves a hard time about it. We can just now take this information and

be, okay, what can I do today? What is one little thing I can do

to, you know again, those little tips you shared, like, practicing

phonics every day. Right? Just little steps can help

us go a long way. I'm so

glad you mentioned that because so many teachers I talk to talk about

that guilt and shame and even blame. There can be a lot

of anger and frustration pointed toward the

literacy curriculum developers or the teacher training

program specialists who put together these curriculums and, you know, didn't

actually include the information we need as teachers to be successful.

And we talk about how we have this battery of energy. And if we're taking

all of our energy to feel guilty Mhmm. And we're directing it

toward anger and blame, then we don't have energy

left to actually learn the new tools and strategies we need to

be successful. And that's what the that's where the progress is going to be

made is when we actually are focusing on learning

and leaning into this work and just doing better. Exactly. And if

you do feel guilt and shame or those feelings, we're also not telling you

just, oh, just push it away. You know, you don't feel that. Because

obviously, if you're feeling it, you've got you need to lean into that and feel

and process that emotion. But we're just telling you that, you know,

just try not to stay there. Right? Like feel it,

heal it and then let's get to reading reading your

book, going through your training. Whatever they can do to help

them learn more about the science of reading and how they can apply it a

little step at a time. 100 percent. Okay. So,

I feel like we got a little out, like, on a tangent there, but I

love it. We always love that when we're recording. So

earlier, we also talked about, like, small groups versus literacy centers.

So now can you explain one for the brand new teacher when like, small groups

versus literacy centers? And then a little bit more about what you

do with your literacy centers, specifically. Yes. This

is one of my happy, magical places. The

difference between a small reading group and a literacy center is that when

you are leading a small reading group, you have students sitting in front of

you. You are giving them instruction. You are leading a

lesson. When you have literacy centers, you that's what you're

having the rest of your class work on during that time. So,

it's really important that you have your classroom management

dialed in on those literacy centers because you need to be able to

focus your time and attention on the kids who are sitting in front of you

and looking to you to give a really solid lesson.

So, one of my favorite tips for anybody who is new to literacy

centers or anybody who feels like that time of day

is stressful and chaotic is go back

to the basics. And the basics are 1 literacy center.

So, pick 1 and have your entire class

work on it. And what we wanna do here is we really wanna make sure

we are being crystal clear about what our expectations are.

What does great behavior look like? It can be as

detailed as where do we find the supplies that we need?

What tone of voice, what level of voice volume are we using when we're

talking to our neighbor, what are we doing when we're cleaning up our supplies. We

really want to get in the weeds here because so often as teachers,

we just assume our kids can read our minds and they know what

is expected of them. And many times they don't. So

we want to make sure that we're laying it all out for them. And then

we're giving them a chance to practice by actually having the

entire class work on that literacy center at the same exact

time, and we want them to be able to succeed. So I

also recommend you set a timer for just 3 or 4

minutes because most likely your class will be

able to stay on task and focus for those 3 or 4 minutes. And that's

great for you because then at the end of the time, you

can pile on the kudos and the

praise, and you can call out students for making really great

choices and following those expectations so you can reinforce what

you said you expected them to do at the beginning. So

just by starting small and having kids practice, you'll

be blown away by what a difference it makes. Do that for 3

or 4 minutes that first day. The next day, if you feel like you can

stretch them, add on 1 more minute. The next day, add on one more minute.

But keep the threshold low, until you know that they're ready

to go the entire time. Okay. I just love that

idea, 1, of what you mentioned at the beginning of having them do one

thing. Because I feel like when I was a new teacher, you know, I jumped

in. I'm like, I wanna have all the different centers and have

them rotating and all of that. And we can work up to that.

But I do think, especially if you're first like, starting out teaching or

if, let's say, you need to really work on the classroom management,

like, it's okay to go back to that too. Like, okay, we're gonna just have

everybody do this. And I love the 3 to 4 minute timer. So it's like

you can because again, that calling out students really does help.

Especially, if you can notice things about those students. So, like, maybe are the

ones who need a little more direction, but you're like, oh, you did it really

well that time. And when you praise them in front of the rest of the

class, that is just really helpful. And I love positive reinforcement

whenever possible too versus more like punishment for classroom

management. Right? So I love how it's just working up, adding on a little more

time as they get the capacity for longer periods of

time. So I I love that tip. Yes. Good. I'm glad. Yeah. We talk we

talk about going slow to go fast. And that's exactly what is talking about

is, yes, we want to have 6 stations running in

the classroom. But in order to actually get there and feel like

a sane human who has a really calm class

that is empowering us to actually focus on our small group, we

have to go slow. So For sure. Okay. And then when you're doing

a small group, so you divide them up by leveling. Right? By what they need

support with. And then, what are I mean, I guess you kind of went over

the tips of the phonics, like the science reading things. But is there anything else

you have to add about what you do with those small groups? With those kids

when you pull the ones to work with? Yes. So you're

going to be teaching a lesson. Again, let's pretend we're doing c h. So you

are you're going to introduce the sound first,

which I know can sound a little weird. Like, why would I be focusing

just on the sound that these letters are making? But,

again, we know that humans have a natural superpower for spoken language.

So, we want to start from their place of strength. And you can

ask very simple questions of the kids like, what is your

mouth doing when you make that sound? Have them actually you

can even give them a little handheld mirror. Have them look at their mouth

and see, are their lips together? Are they apart? Are they

buzzing? You know, what is happening with their their lips? You can ask

them what their voice is doing. If they put their fingers on their throat, they

can actually feel if their fingers are vibrating or not. So by

asking these very simple questions, it really focuses students'

attention and helps them hone in on the

characteristics of this special sound. And then now that they're

starting from something they know so well, then you can say, this

sound is in so many words. Let's brainstorm

words that have this sound in it. Come up with a big list. Write down

every suggestion the kids think about, and then circle

the ch sound in each of those words and ask them if they

notice something. And what you'll be amazed by is many times they

can notice, oh, you know what? In all of those words that we came up

with, that sound is spelled with CH.

And when they are the ones who are making the connection and it's not you,

then their learning is just going to be off the and it's not you Mhmm.

Then their learning is just gonna be off the charts. Yeah. So powerful when they

can do it themselves instead of us just telling them everything. Right?

I love that. And then, this is circling back because because we talked about it

and then we brought it back. So rather than like the leveled readers, you

mentioned wanting the books that have the sounds that they're teaching.

But if what they have in their classroom is those leveled books, what are your

recommendations for if they're like, okay. Well, I'm teaching the ch sound.

What do I need to do? Just get a whole bunch of books and look

for the like, in there? Like, what would you recommend for them? Do you

have a resource or what what is it they need to look for? Yeah. The

never ending rabbit hole of Google searches that just makes you wanna, yeah,

pull your head out. No. I do not have to do that. We

yes. We've we actually have made this really easy because

we've just we my team and I thought, you know what?

We are so tired of having to pull these resources together ourselves. So

we're just gonna take the phonics lesson plan, and we're gonna

put right behind it a passage that practices that skill. And

then the very next page is gonna be a couple of literacy centers that

teachers can print out and use in their classroom right away. So we've

created this massive library of phonics lessons that we're calling

the phonics toolkit that really gives you everything you need. So if you are looking

for something that is definitely an option for you. And I

also would say if you have leveled readers in your library or

classroom library, don't throw them out. Walk

upstairs or down the hall and go to your 3rd, 4th,

or 5th grade teachers and see if they want the books. Because their

kids, most likely, hopefully, will have learned all of those spelling

rules and phonics patterns. And so they will be able to read them. I

love that. Because, yeah, it's not like, oh, these books are garbage. Right? They're just

like they might not be ready for those sounds yet. So once they have,

then they're great. Love that suggestion. Alright. I I've loved everything you

shared here. I know you have so much more to share as well, and you'll

be presenting at our educate and rejuvenate conference. So

what will attendees be getting from your session? Yes. I am so

excited to pass along even more teaching tips and

tools to your to your listeners. What I'm gonna be talking about is

the 4 step system that has saved me 100 of hours of planning

time and it's saved other teachers around the world the same.

It's 4 simple steps that you can follow. And once you put

them in place, it makes lesson planning for your small groups really quick

and easy because you just rinse and repeat. So I'm gonna be passing that

along to your listeners along with some helpful checklists

and templates that they can use to just print off and get going

right away. I love that. I cannot wait for your

session. It's going to be just so good. And the

the event isn't happening until July though. So if they're listening, they're like, I wanna

get started. Or they listen to your session, but they're like, well, I want more.

What else do you have available that they can go to right away where we

can link to it in the show notes where they can learn more about small

groups or the science of reading or your resource vault or anything else?

You can always find me on Instagram at play doh 2. That's

number 2, play doh. You can find me on play doh 2 Play

Doh, t o Play Doh. We have a whole lot of keys. I love it.

In our world. And, of course, you can have yeah. You can

grab my book, The Science of Reading in Action, it which is

available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, all the places. Amazing.

So so happy to have you here. Thank you so much for your

time. Anything else you wanna share before we go? I will leave you with one

last tip because, again, I could just go on forever, but I'm gonna give you

one more. If you have a sight word list or a

spelling list and you're finding that your students are having a really hard time

learning those words, try this. Take your list and

sort it by phonics rule or by spelling pattern. For example, put

all of your short a words in one pile and teach those short

a words when you teach your short a phonics lesson. Take all of

your digraph c h words and put them in a

different pile. Once you sort your list, you're gonna be blown away by how

much easier it is for your students to learn those words simply because they

can focus a 100% of their brain power on one

rule. I love that idea. Such a great tip. See,

even just these little tips here and there, they can just make such a big

difference. And sorting by spelling rule makes it so they don't have to try to

learn all these different rules at the same time. I love that. Less overwhelm for

them, less overwhelm for us. Right? Exactly. K. Well, thank you so much for your

time today. We appreciate all of your expertise and your time for being here.

Thank you for having me.

If you enjoyed this episode, please hit subscribe so you don't miss the next

one. And if you're hungry for more, be sure to check out the book that

I wrote. It's called Educate and Rejuvenate, a 3 step guide to revitalize

your teaching, renew Your Spirit, and Reignite Your Passion

For Life. It is scheduled to be released in the summer of 2024.

This book takes all the life coaching skills we talk about here on the podcast

and puts them together in one easy to understand guide. Plus, when you

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