Hi! Because of exactly what you said (group 2 not having the day’s instruction yet) I don’t tend to have the work be specific to what we’re learning, especially early in the week. My district requires us to do 30-45 minutes a week with an online program so I usually do that early in the week. It’s supposed to be targeted to their individual deficiencies. Then, later in the week, I layer in specific practice. By Wednesday, my higher group (usually my group 2 for that reason) is able to work on this week’s skill independently from the two previous day’s instructions. I also sometimes put in games or previous review during the week or if it’s a skill I don’t want students to do much practice with without me.

As for workbooks, I do typically use mine in my small groups with me. That way, I can see how students are doing on it and correct misconceptions right away.

No, I started doing it after trial and error in my classroom and it worked for me and my students. I haven’t looked for any research on it, though.

Hi there! How I used the Ready materials changed every single year, unfortunately. Because the curriculum is written at a much high level, what my kids needed varied each year. In 1st, I didn’t have quite as much of a need to have two different groups because students didn’t have as much of a span. But I still did it because it allowed me to really hone in on my lower kids and their needs. I would pull my group and we would model it together typically. My lower group needed much more scaffolding on strategies and the word problems themselves and I would ask more lower level questions. We did things much more step by step together. While I still would ask them open ended questions and to explain their reasoning, we would do things step by step at a time. My higher group needed much less scaffolding and support so I relied on open ended questions like “What did you do?”. We also did a word problem outside of our Ready lessons (as I’ve detailed here) so students got to hear from students of all abilities. The reason I continued with this was because it allowed me to have a real eye on my kids and allowed me to know exactly how each was doing- and to make it so the struggling students weren’t just relying on their much stronger peers.

Also, I would start at the beginning of the pages with the curriculum. I wouldn’t worry about finishing all of the independent practice pages. We would get done what we could get done each week. When we got to the independent practice pages I could have my higher group work for 10 minutes or so, and then we could go over the problems together. With my lower students, I’d have them work independently on one problem, and we’d go over it. Then they’d do the next. The students still had independent practice, but I was able to keep an eye on their work to provide soft support, and they weren’t spending a large chunk of time floundering on their own. I use the Practice & Problem Solving pages as homework- often the week after we do the lesson in class. That way, students should be able to do them independently.

I hope this helps! Feel free to email me at talesfromoutsidetheclassroom @ gmail to talk through it more!