Should Reading Be Taught Whole Class or Small Group?

Tim Shanahan

Blast from the Past: This blog first posted on April 28, 2018, and was re-posted on November 23, 2019. It is now being reposted again (and updated) on June 7, 2025. Original content has been adjusted, new content has been added, and the original posting included no research references.

Teacher question 2025: I respect your opinion and would love to get your thoughts on some new information that is out right now. In our community the idea of providing core foundational skills instruction to small groups is being promoted as the “science of reading.” Our schools teach foundational skills on a whole classroom basis and then use tiered intervention time for filling gaps. This has been highly effective. Could you help to clarify this issue?

Original Teacher Question: I was curious what your thoughts are regarding small group instruction in elementary school during the ELA block. I’m unaware of any definitive research on the effect size of small group instruction or the impact it has regarding student achievement in reading. There seems to be a few different schools of thought: direct whole group instruction for all components of reading, shortened whole group reading followed by differentiated small group instruction, whole group instruction followed by student work groups facilitated by teacher walking around. It seems all three could be effective depending on the students, the teacher and rigor of text or content being used.  However, I’m curious if there is a research-based recommendation?  

Shanahan’s response:

Small group teaching is ubiquitous in elementary reading classes. That was true when I myself was being taught to read (65 years ago), though our classes then were so large that “small group” meant groups about the size of today’s typical class.

By the beginning of the 20^th century there was much within-class grouping, but that was due to the pervasive one-room schoolhouse. Those “groups” were the “grades.” My dad, a product of such a school, bragged for years that he “graduated at the top of his class”—meaning the other kid flunked.

When I was first exploring the idea of becoming a teacher, the lore of the time was that reading teachers always had three reading groups: the Robins, Blue Jays, and Crows. As a teacher’s aide it certainly looked that way to me, and I wasn’t surprised during my student teaching when Mr. Krentzin had me take over those leveled reading groups one at a time.

Admittedly, as a primary grade teacher, I always grouped my kids for reading instruction. Studies have long reported that more than 90% of primary grade teachers group for reading, with high incidence in the upper grades as well (e.g., Austin & Morrison, 1963).

Historically, small group reading instruction has been aimed at matching kids with books of certain levels – a practice the effectiveness of which is refuted in my forthcoming book (Shanahan, 2025). As that 2025 letter above illustrates, now small group teaching is as likely to be aimed at phonics – and not as a follow up for the stragglers, but as initial teaching.

Where this valancing of small group literacy teaching will end is anyone’s guess. Kids need instruction in words (phonemic awareness, phonics, spelling, morphology), fluency, comprehension, and writing. Perhaps we could have 3 groups for each. For a 2-hour block that would allow for 10 minutes of teaching of each topic to each group each day. Future research could sort out how long it would take such an approach to drive the average teacher insane!

This blog entry was originally written with a focus on those typical leveled reading groups along with an odd practice that was appearing during the 2010s. Schools were (and are) organizing their schedules around “small group time.” Schools that require a period of small group teaching are mindlessly promoting the value of such teaching — no matter the situation. I was seeing identical lessons taught to one small group after another to accomplish a principal’s or curriculum coordinator’s small group mandate.

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