Stellar Teacher Podcast with Sara Marye

Tired of making the same small group mistakes? Small group instruction can be one of the most valuable parts of your literacy block. It gives you a chance to work closely with students, provide targeted support, and respond to specific reading needs. But small groups can also be one of the easiest parts of your literacy block to overcomplicate. Am I meeting with every student enough? How should I group my students? What exactly should I teach? Should my small group lesson connect to what we’re doing in whole group? And how am I supposed to fit all of this into an already packed literacy block? We’ve been there. We made all the small group mistakes. Learn from us!

MTSS in the classroom can feel much more complicated than simply understanding what Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 mean. You might understand the MTSS framework in theory, but what does it actually look like during your upper elementary literacy block? What should happen during Tier 1? How do you determine what a student needs during Tier 2? And when a student needs Tier 3 support, do you need to find an entirely different intervention program? In this episode of The Stellar Teacher Podcast, Emily is taking MTSS from theory to practice. You'll see how each tier can work within your literacy classroom and learn practical ways to provide increasingly targeted support based on what your students actually need.

Time management for teachers can feel almost impossible when there is always more to do than there are hours in the school day. More time to plan. More time to teach. More time to make copies, respond to emails, grade assignments, meet with students—and maybe even have a little more fun with your class. If you regularly leave school wondering where the day went or find yourself saying, I wish I had more time, this Listen Again episode is worth revisiting. We're bringing it back because teachers' plates aren't getting any less full, and the strategies in this conversation can help you rethink how you're using the limited time you have.

Supporting struggling readers can feel especially challenging when you have a classroom full of students with completely different needs. You might have a handful of students who need intensive phonics intervention, a few students reading well above grade level, and everyone else somewhere in the middle. So how are you supposed to meet all of those needs without spending your entire literacy block running from one small group to the next? The good news is that meeting every student's needs doesn't mean giving every student the exact same support.