Think small!

Streaming video - 2014

With the advent of RTI (Response to Intervention), teachers everywhere are spending part of their day teaching in small groups. In Think small!, master teacher and author Debbie Diller plans and teaches various small-group lessons with students at different reading levels while the rest of the class works independently at literacy work stations. Teachers learn how to form groups, organize for small-group instruction, choose books, write lesson plans, and support student independence so they can teach more effectively in small groups with young readers. Debbie works with pre-emergent readers on rhyming and oral language in small groups. She teaches two differentiated lessons with an emergent group that focuses on learning high-frequency word...s, both in reading and writing. Other small-group lessons include a focus on fluency and comprehension in guided reading with first-grade readers. In a dynamic, engaging whole-group reading lesson, Debbie models a skill all students need and later takes this same skill to small group. Think small! - particularly when used in conjunction with Debbie's book, Making the Most of Small Groups - is ideal for professional study groups or staff development programs designed to help teachers deliver more focused small group instruction. About the author Debbie Diller has been a national consultant since 2000, but she still has "those 'back-to-school' dreams in the fall." After playing school in the basement of her childhood home in Lititz, Pennsylvania, she earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in education from Millersville University and Temple University and spent the next thirty years as an educator. Debbie's ideas for her books also come from her work with teachers. She listens for frequently asked questions, patterns, teachers' needs and keeps a writer's notebook to collect ideas, thoughts, and notes. "Often, the old joke comes to mind: 'how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.' That's how I write: bit by bit, on planes, in hotel rooms, in my office on a rare day. Teachers' questions and comments spur me on through my daily, ongoing work in classrooms, which sustains my work." more