The Game-Changing Benefits of Whole-Class Instruction

I was going to start this blog relatively safely by sharing some insights into what happens in my class and providing tips to other teachers. Then I read an article in The Age newspaper by Adam Carey. In it whole-class instruction is portrayed as “The children sit in rows, engaged in a half-hour game of call and response with their teacher that is part reading exercise, part endurance test.”
(Read it here [paywall]: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/no-student-left-behind-phonics-push-for-disadvantaged-schools-20210421-p57l0n.html)

This dismissal of whole-class instruction is common and I am tired of it. Too much whole class instruction is often rejected as ‘drill & kill’, ‘chalk & talk’ or being the dreaded ‘sage on the stage’. For years I thought that I needed to minimise whole-class instruction. I ended up having multiple groups at different ability levels. I thought I was doing a great job at differentiation. I was being ‘student-centred’ and believed I was meeting my students ‘at their point of need’.

This focus on small group instruction has some major consequences.
Firstly, it reduces the amount of instructional time each student receives. I would have between 3-5 groups. In a 60 minute reading session, I might see 3 groups for 20 minutes each (on a good day). The other groups would be doing ‘independent tasks’. And while I tried to make these tasks meaningful activities, I now recognise that they often ended up being little more than busy work. By shifting to more whole-class instruction, I maximise the time each child spends on meaningful work.

Secondly, I was suddenly doing three-five times the amount of planning! This is a significant increase in workload and an unrealistic expectation on teachers- especially graduates. Now that I am doing less planning, I am finding that the learning activities we do in class have a much more significant impact on my students' learning.

Thirdly, using ability-based groups can doom students to a trajectory of under-performance. One 2016 review by Marshall Jean of the National Education Policy Center found that “Tracking is often implemented in ways that hinder the learning of students assigned to low tracks” (Read it here).
Despite the claims that small groups creates a more equal system for instruction, the opposite is true! Moving to whole-class instructions means that I am providing opportunities for ALL my students to achieve at a high level.

Last year I started using Heggerty’s Phonemic Awareness with a Grade 1/2 class. I knew that this would be a powerful session for my weaker readers. I knew that it would help them segment and blend sounds. What I didn’t realise was how much my stronger readers would benefit. These students were reading Harry Potter, yet struggled to identify the final phoneme of a word. If I’d stuck with small groups then these students would have missed out on meaningful learning.

So, what does whole-class instruction look like in my classroom?
All students complete the same tasks. I want all children to achieve the same learning. Otherwise a gap in learning will emerge, and I will doom some of my students to a trajectory of under-achievement. I used to set different comprehension tasks for each group. All students would be learning about finding the main idea but the complexity of texts and topics explored. How much richer is it for students to explore the same texts and hear the thoughts of all of their peers? Would you be happy if your child was getting a watered down version of what their peers receive?

​Differentiation still occurs. I am still able to meet each child at their point of need. One example of this is my paired-fluency reads. Each child reads a list of sounds and words to their partner for 30 seconds. This list is the same for every child, but some students may only say a few sounds, while others may read the whole list. Their partner follows along and corrects them if they hear a mistake. One task for the whole class that is still differentiated for each child.

My students sit in rows for table-work. This allows every child the opportunity to see the whiteboard clearly. It also gives me the chance to monitor EVERY child’s learning and provide feedback immediately.

I Check for Understanding frequently. I once heard that the average number of times that a teacher hears from a student was about 3-6 times in a lesson. So I decided to measure it. Within the space of 1 hour reading session I heard from students about a dozen times each IF they were in one of my instructional groups for the day. For those students who were not in my instructional groups, their number was zero. One hour of learning and all some students got was a cursory glance at their work.
Nowadays, I regularly use a variety of devices to check for understanding. This means that I hear from ALL students over 50 times in a one-hour session (this is a very conservative estimate), through the use of mini-whiteboards, choral responses, cold-calling and other strategies. Checking for Understanding techniques will be a great topic for a future blog.

Would I rather my 5-year-old’s teachers to hear from 0 or 50 times in an hour?
Would you like me to give feedback to your child half a dozen times in a day, or over two hundred times?
Which one is more student-centred?

Whole class instruction is powerful. Let’s not dismiss it with silly caricatures and catchphrases.
 

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If you want to find out more about shifting reading groups to a more whole-class approach, then I strongly recommend the video Rethinking Guided Reading by Natalie Campbell & Stephanie Le Lievre. 

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