Michael HornThought leader creating a world where all individuals can build passions & fulfill their human potential. Author of the national bestseller Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career

Small-group instruction holds a lot of potential - but you have to do it right

Name: Small-group instruction holds a lot of potential - but you have to do it right
Uploaded: 2025-12-03T16:15:03+00:00
Duration: 1 min 21 s
Channel: Michael Horn
Description: In this monologue, Michael Horn responds to recent assertions by Mike Schmoker and Tim Shanahan that small‑group reading instruction is ineffective. Horn…

3 Dec 2025 · 1 min

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1:21

In this monologue, Michael Horn responds to recent assertions by Mike Schmoker and Tim Shanahan that small‑group reading instruction is ineffective. Horn acknowledges that poorly designed small‑group activities can waste instructional time, but he points to schools where well‑aligned small‑group work yields large learning gains. He argues that when small‑group tasks are coherent with whole‑class instruction, they can provide deliberate practice, response‑to‑intervention, active learning, real‑time feedback, and mastery learning—principles shown by research to be highly effective. Horn cautions against oversimplifying the debate by pitting whole‑class against small‑group models, urging researchers to recognize the nuanced interplay of instructional design and learning principles.

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Mike Schmoker and Tim Shanahan certainly caught my attention when they argued recently that, quote, small group reading instruction doesn't work. But here's the twist. I can point to schools where they're using small groups and seeing massive learning gains. So what's going on? I think the evidence suggests that, yeah, they're right, that it's a waste of instructional minutes and when you're doing busy work that's disconnected from what students should be learning from a teacher. That's bad. But it's also a strawman because small group reading models don't have to work like that. If the activities that students are doing on their own are coherent with what they are working on with a teacher, then small groups can layer in deliberate practice, response to intervention, more active learning, better real time feedback, and mastery learning, which have all been shown in the research to be great uses of a student's time that are actually better than than what occurs in many whole class models. But maybe that's the real rub, that we just need to stop oversimplifying these conversations by pitting whole class against small groups. There's a place for both, and education researchers should do better by acknowledging the nuance and the actual learning principles at play.