Like all things in education, I'm sure there are other names for Skill Builders so let me define exactly what I am talking about. In my experience, Skill Builders involves dividing students into groups based upon which student expectation each child has not mastered. So, teachers examine current data carefully, assessments, running records, etc., and determine which student expectations need to be covered. Keeping in mind that, in most cases, all of the students will need to be in a group, teachers choose or are assigned a skill that they will teach in their Skill Builders group. Since on-grade-level students and above-grade-level students will also need to be in a group, it is not just the low student expectations that will need to be assigned to a teacher. Depending upon the number of teachers involved in Skill Builders and the number of students who are below-grade-level, there may be several low groups, a middle group and a high group. Teachers need to look at each student's data and determine which group will most closely fit what the student needs to know next. The trickiest part is making sure that the lower-level students are in small groups. If they are not, it will be much more difficult to make an impact on their learning. When possible, make your higher level group(s) the largest so that they can work on an Inquiry Circle Project or some other type of project based learning activity. This allows one teacher to have several students authentically engaged while the other teachers are working with students who really need more individualized attention.
Once you have determined which students belong in which groups, be conscientious about assigning teachers to the groups. If you have a teacher who really rocks phonics, put her with the low group. If your have a teacher who works really well with gifted and talented or higher achieving kids, give her that group. When possible, attempt to match your lower students with teacher who are not their homeroom teacher. Sometimes these children benefit most from hearing another teacher explain the skills they are missing. If they are in a group with their own classroom teacher, they may be missing out on an opportunity. Sometimes this will be unavoidable but it is something to consider.
It is important that all of the teachers have input into the lessons for each group if they have a child that will be placed in that group. Ultimately, the teacher who is pulling that group of children will need to decide how she is going to address her student expectation but if the other teachers are not aware of what each group is working on, this can cause problems with overlapping lessons, guided reading books being read more than once by the same students, and too many projects for your higher kids. When your team meets, talk briefly about what you are doing or make your plans available for others to see in a shared folder.
These groups also need to be very fluid. If a student masters a skill quickly, move that child to another group. If you find that a child is struggling in one of the higher groups, perhaps there is a group focusing on the skills he needs work in. In order for Skill Builders to be successful, it must be flexible and teacher have to communicate.
It is also essential that teachers communicate about student progress and what they are seeing in their groups. As a Reading Specialist, I work with students from every single classroom on my campus. I am constantly communicating with teacher and letting them know how their students are doing in my groups. We must discuss the child's progress so that we know what he or she is responding to and what skills or knowledge I am seeing that perhaps the classroom teacher hasn't seen, or vice versa. You would probably be very surprised to know how often I see something the teachers don't see or a child will be able to complete a task for a teacher but not for me. Children are little enigmas! Without constant communication, Skill Builders will not be as successful as it could be.
It is certainly much more simple to implement Skill Builders on a grade-level basis. For example, the first grade team at our campus is currently implementing Skill Builders. They meet every week for their Professional Learning Team and one of the things they talk about is their Skill Builders groups. If they need to move students, they do so. If a teacher has a concern about a student, they can discuss it. If a teacher needs to select a different student expectation, she has her teammates to help her look at the data, decide what to cover next, and help her plan her lessons. For this team, it doesn't take long for them to do any of these things because the work extremely well together, they communicate professionally and they own all kids. This is the philosophy that must be adopted for Skill Builders to work well.
When attempting to implement Skill Builders campus wide, this is much more difficult. Scheduling has to be considered. Skill Builders cannot happen when a grade-level is at lunch, special classes like music, or at recess. Likewise, teachers have to be able to communicate with colleagues in other grade-levels, which means there most likely will not be a shared planning time. Administrators will need to build this time into the teachers' schedule, either on an assigned meeting day or as part of their contract time. Lesson planning is more difficult because students are covering various materials in their classes. Logistically speaking, it is more difficult. Students may not know how to get to their Skill Builders teacher's classroom. All of these things must be considered--but it can be done. I've actually done it myself!
I served as summer school principal at a 3-5 campus and we implemented campus wide Skill Builders. I felt that it was very successful and the students loved it. I did a lot of work on the front end to try to ensure the success of the program. I knew I had four weeks so I had a precise number of days. I planned all of the lesson for the reading groups ahead of time. I looked at the student data, divided the students into groups, assigned the student expectations to teachers, and created folders with all of the lessons they needed, plus some extras just in case. I asked the Instructional Specialist at the campus to do the same for math. I believe all of this work before school began was very important to the success of the program. The end result was that every educator on our campus (myself included!) spent 30 minutes in the morning in Skill Builders group for reading and 30 minutes in the afternoon in Skill Builders for math. I used the Library Media Specialist, the Instructional Specialist, the Special Education teacher, the Instructional Aides, everyone who could teach was teaching. The kids had a passport and they earned a stamp each time they attended. The kids looked forward to going to Skill Builders because we made it fun, it was timely for each of them, and no one was bored. Everyone was learning exactly what he or she needed to learn at that moment.
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| If you build it, skills will come! (Pic courtesy of Builders London) |
I will say that many of the teachers did not buy-in to the program and that was probably the only unsuccessful part of the experience. What I found was that the teachers that had worked with me before loved it and saw great results. They were on the same page as I was. Some of the other teachers, mostly those I didn't know as well and those who were unfamiliar with the program were much more skeptical. Some of them felt that it was a "waste of time" and didn't understand why we were going to "all this trouble." The bottom line is, Skill Builders will be as successful or as unsuccessful as we want it to be. It is all determined by our attitudes and the amount of work you and I are willing to put into it.
In order to put a Skill Builders program in place for your team or campus, I believe you need to keep these key words in mind:
Communicate--with your team, with your administrators, with your students. You can never communicate too much!
Plan--look at your data carefully and create a plan for implementation. Who will teach what? Where will they teach it? How will the students get to their Skill Builders class? Where will new students go? When will we have Skill Builders? How will this affect our previous schedule?
Be Positive--if you go into it with a stinky attitude, you will get stinky results. Believe in it, make it fun, and your kids will love it!
Believe in it--If you truly believe we own all kids and that we need to meet the needs of each student just in time, the question shouldn't be, "How can we do Skill Builders?" it should be "How can we NOT be doing Skill Builders??"
If you have implemented Skill Builders or a similar program on your campus, we would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment or message me! If you are excited about trying this on your campus, we'd love to hear from you, too!
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