WHY? “A center is independent; it is not instructional. What you’re able to do at a center is typically practice concepts that you’ve already learned. So you would never want to put a student at a center activity and expect them to do their own learning, because you’ve increased the chances that they’re going to mis-learn information and make errors, or that they’re just going to fake learning so that you don’t interrupt them for behaviour problems. Centers are not active learning opportunities. They again, are typically practicing fluency of a previously learned skill.”
Jamey Peavler, S7E3 Science of Reading: The Podcast
However, what can we do if only half the class is accurate with a skill and working on fluency while some are still working on accuracy? One way to mitigate this disparity during independent centers is to use Strategic Partners. These are partnerships where one student is already accurate with a skill and is building fluency, whereas the second student is still working on accuracy. In such partnerships, the fluent student can be trained to provide basic scaffolding for the student working on accuracy.
This method of partnering students allows for scaffolding and corrective feedback during independent centers.
As well, it ensures that our most fluent students are not paired with the least fluent students as such partnerships often lead to frustration on both sides because the skill gap is too large.
HOW? To begin with, you will need to consider which skill you are targeting. In my work, I am most often concerned with decoding ability for strategic partnerships to support independent Roll & Read (word level phonics practice) and Read to a Friend (rereading decodable text). As such, I consider students’ decoding ability based on an assessment such as a Nonsense-Word Fluency assessment (NWF), DIBELS or Acadience, or a Phonics Survey, CORE or SD36.
*In Kindergarten, since I start with grapheme/phoneme practice, students are partnered based on a lowercase letter sound assessment. When students have about 10 high-utility sounds, they move to blending words and I also consider phoneme blending assessments. However, Strategic Partnerships are very useful in a variety of contexts, including oral language partners (students are paired based on their oral language ability for Turn & Talk) and even other curricular areas such as numeracy.
If you prefer view a video on how to create Strategic Partners, you can watch my video on Strategic Partners. Otherwise, you can continue reading the step-by-step instructions below.
1. Take a class list and add the assessment information for the skill you want to target. For example, if I want to support decoding through Strategic Partnerships, then I would add the NWF score (both Correct Letter Sounds, CLS, and Words Read Correctly, WRC) for each child beside their name.
2. Next, cut up the class list into strips. Each strip should have the student name and assessment score.
3. On a coloured piece of paper, write “Most Fluent” at the top, and “Least Fluent” at the bottom. Then, lay out the strips on the coloured piece of paper, organizing the strips according to each student’s assessment score. Your most fluent student would be at the top, and your least fluent student would be at the bottom.
In the example shown to the left, I had not yet completed NSF assessments for the students as it was just the beginning of the year. As such, the NSF score is not shown on the strip. In this case, we organized the students based on what the Classroom Teacher had observed so far in terms of decoding ability. However, when we made new partners a few weeks later, we did use their assessment scores to determine placement.
*If you have students who are beginner ELL or Special Ed, leave their name strips to the side and add them to partnerships to form triads.
4. Count the number of names on the list and determine where the half-way point will be. Cut the paper in half and move the two half sheets side by side.
5. You now have your skill-based partners! Your most fluent students are partnered with medium fluent students and your least fluent students are partnered with medium fluent students. This ensures that the learning gap between students is not so great as to make it frustrating for them to work together.
6. Adjust partnerships for behaviour and personality suitability by moving names a spot down or up. Also, if you have an uneven number of students, consider where you can add a student to make a triad. Also, take any student names that you originally put aside (Beginner ELL or Special Ed) and add them to partnerships to form triads.
*Whenever possible, add a Beginner ELL student to partnerships where one student speaks the same home language. This way the student can also provide language support.
7. If you have a few students who are significantly below the rest of the students in the focus skill (such as decoding), you may choose to see these students in a small group during independent centers. In this case, the students in the small group would not be part of the strategic partnerships. One example I encountered this year was where a student did not yet know all her high-utility sounds (due to attendance issues) and the rest of the class was working on decoding 4 phoneme words. In this case, we arranged for the LST teacher or classroom teacher to work with the student during small group and she was not part of the strategic partnerships for decoding. It also allowed her to have the most specialized support to begin to fill in the gaps in her learning.
Corrective feedback is essential for our students who are still working on accuracy and Strategic Partnerships are one way to provide corrective feedback during independent centers.
“Errors should be immediately corrected before additional retrieval opportunities are provided, so as to reduce practice errors. If students make repeated errors, the error pattern may become habitual, making it more difficult to eradicate from the students’ repertoire.”
Archer & Hughes, pg. 178, Explicit Instruction
