Stuck here
I'm kind of stuck with my grade level and low group too....maybe we're stuck on doing different things!
I'm limited with my low group. Two of the three are special education students. Two are still reading pre-primer, and one is on probably 1.0 or so. We do lots of phonics and sight word phrase/sentence practice. I try to do something fun with them at least once a week...like sight word bingo, or let them practice a simple poem all week for fluency and let them read it to another student on Thurs. or Fri. (Sometimes a K student, sometimes a friend of their choice from another 2nd grade class.) They love doing this, because they're not used to getting to show off. One of them came back in from reading to a friend (who is also an extremely low student) and said, "Mrs. _____, guess what?! He said I was a really good reader!" It gives them something to work for. This group also enjoys writing their own sentences/short stories. If they do it by themselves, though, they get in a big hurry and you can't even guess what they wrote. If they are sitting at the small group table with me looking on...I remind them to slow down and sound out. They like using the phonics skills we've been working on. I almost always let them read it to a friend in the class or take it to their pull-out spec.ed. teacher to share what they've written after they've read it fluently to me. We're about to start writing with the sight word phrases...like they draw a sight word phrase from the pile...and have to make a sentence with it. I'm in Alabama too. My lowest group are my intensive ones...so I meet with them twice. We usually do a phonics lesson in the morning...and in the afternoon, we review it and do the sight words/writing/sharing then.
In my grade level group, we do some phonics, a good bit of fluency stuff, and have stepped up the comprehension. We may read a passage and answer some questions about it, but I make them highlight where they found the answer or clues to the answer (for inferencing questions) in the passage. They love using the highlighters, and it gets them in the habit of looking back instead of just guessing an answer. We've also read a couple of short nonfiction books and learned about table of contents, index, headings, etc. I will tell them to find something in the book. They race to find it...if they don't know whether to look in the index, table of contents, or glossary...they learn what each means really quickly so they won't be last. We've been spending most of our time on comprehension the last couple of weeks...since they're finally on grade level now (a lot of them weren't near at the beginning of the year), that's really what they need work on.
This is only my first year...so you probably have lots more ideas than me...just thought I'd share what I've been doing.
