small groups
I do small groups once a week. I am changing how I do the small groups. Last year, this was mainly a time for the students to play some games that had review skills in them. Kind of a fun thing we did once a week. I did not actually work with any of the groups. I taught the new game at the beginning of class. The new game was one group that I stayed with to make sure they were playing correctly. The rest of the groups were games they had played before and already knew. They rotated groups every 10 minutes.
This year I am going to use the small groups time for more instruction. I still plan to have a group playing a game, but I want the other groups to be more instructional. The review questions that I correct will give me data on what to go over at the teacher table.
10 minute rotations give me about 15 minutes to give instruction at the beginning of class, four groups rotate through each station, then a quick 5 minute clean up before we switch classes. The rotations take a bit longer at the beginning of the year because they are learning how to switch groups. By the end of the year, the rotation of groups took less than thirty seconds.