Grouping students for guided reading and centers requires

knowledge of strengths, abilities, struggles, and needs. Effective

grouping can be the key to student success during reading centers. I
began grouping my students based on their STAR Reading scores, the
reading test that we administer to students to define their reading
level and abilities. My students were divided into five separate groups
based on their guided reading level. I met with these small groups
during guided reading time, and they stayed in these same groups for
centers. It was important for me to group my students in this way,
since I met with guided reading groups during center time. Ankrum and
Bean (2008) put the importance of differentiated instruction into
perspective by explaining, There is evidence that providing all
students with the same reading instruction can be detrimental to
student achievement. In classrooms comprised of students with varied
reading levels where the teachers did not engage in differentiated
instruction, student achievement for the average and low achieving
students suffered; high achieving students made merely modest gains
(p. 134). For this reason, I grouped students by individual needs, in
order to properly differentiate the work that they were doing based on
the type of support that they needed. If a student is grouped with
classmates who are far above their own level and are given work far
above that level, that student will be left behind as others progress and
improve. Susan G. Cox (2008) illustrates this when she writes,

Readiness has to do with a students current preparedness to work

with a prescribed set of knowledge, understanding, and skill. If a
student finds the work too easy, he or she will not learn. If the work is
too difficult, the result is the same. Everyone learns best when the
work is a little above our current level and there is a system in place to
help us bridge the gap (p. 53). This directly correlates to Vygotskys
(1978) idea of teachers working with students until they are able to be
self-sufficient learners. It was important for me to identify a students
zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) through the reading
data that I collected on students. This means that the success that
students were projected to achieve with my support helped me to
scaffold my group instruction accordingly. This was another driving
force in the importance of grouping students by ability for centers. I
provided my students with the support that they needed until they
were able to sufficiently work independently and within these small
groups. As students progressed and grew at different rates, I also had
to have the flexibility to rearrange the grouping of students. Students
had to be steadily and appropriately challenged in order to further their
growth, so I needed to be aware of when students were no longer
having their academic needs met and change their groups
appropriately.
A component of student grouping that also was taken into
account was my group of ESL students. My class consisted of a handful

of ESL students and their reading needs had to be met while they were
still adjusting to a new language. These students may have had high
reading abilities, but also needed to be grouped so that the work they
were doing was improving their language skills. I found within my
classroom that many of my ESL students struggled with phonics work.
This was something that I wanted these students to focus on during
centers, to get the most out of their time. Montero, Newmaster, and
Ledger (2014) state that, for these students, more ESL training and
support will not be enough because these students need literacy
programs, not just language programs. [Teachers] must transform and
extend their pedagogical repertoires to include a greater emphasis on
literacy development, including foundational literacy skills (p. 60).
Providing practice with these skills through cooperative and
independent work in centers benefited the literacy development of
these students. Zhang (2007) describes the importance of using
strategic reading instruction to increase the reading confidence of ESL
learners, stating, learner development is related to learners steady
increase in confidence and reading competence reflected in their
proactive interest in becoming efficient readers (p. 91). Working
cooperatively with others and repeatedly working on specific literacy
skills through centers allowed for this confidence to emerge.
Consequently, ESL students were grouped in a way that allowed them

to receive the most support and positive examples from their group
members.