Small Group Reading Activities for Kindergarten

One of the best ways to support beginning readers is with consistent feedback. However, this can be a challenge in a classroom setting with so many students! This is why small group instruction and practice is essential in kindergarten. In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorite small group reading activities for kindergarten students. These activities will help your students become more independent, confident, and fluent readers!

Using Small Groups for Reading Practice

While students are engaged in independent literacy practice during centers time, it’s a great opportunity to work with students in small groups. Students can rotate to your table as one of their stations.

 There are many benefits to using small groups for reading practice:

• Targeted Instruction: The first benefit is that you can target specific skills that your students need to work on. These could be tricky skills that students need to review or advanced skills for students who are ready for a challenge.
• Hands-On Practice: It’s much easier to manage hands-on learning activities with a few students at a time. These hands-on activities help students make connections with what they’re learning.
• Engaging Repetition: Young students need a lot of repetition with new literacy skills in order for them to stick. Small group instruction gives you another opportunity to add this much-needed repetition to your daily learning routine.

Engaging Small Group Reading Activities

I’m going to share three of my favorite small group reading activities that can help you make the most of these benefits. These activities can help you provide targeted instruction through hands-on activities and other engaging repetition.

1. Word Reading Fluency Activity

This activity is a great addition to your small group word reading practice. With these printables, you can target specific phonics skills that your students need to work on. Each activity focuses on a specific phonics pattern. Students will practice reading and writing each word on the page, then determine which of the pictures belongs in the blank space. This is great fine motor practice!

Within a small group, you can listen for and correct error patterns as students try to decode each word. This instant feedback is so helpful for beginning readers! You can make small corrections in letter sounds and blending that can help students read words with more confidence.

Due to the way this activity is set up, it can also be used as self-correcting reading practice. This can be helpful in a small group setting, since students can quietly read the words to themselves while you focus your attention on individual students. You can work your way around the table, listening to students one at a time, while the rest of the small group is reading and getting instant feedback from the self-correcting activity.

If you would like to take a closer look at all of the phonics patterns included with this resource, you can find it in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or in my TPT store.

2. Sight Word Readers

Another resource that’s great for small group reading practice is this set of sight word readers. Each printable booklet focuses on one high frequency word that’s included in each sentence.

In the small group setting, you can have students flip through the booklet to go on a “word hunt” and circle or highlight the sight word on each page. Then, you can go back through the booklet and practice reading the sentences. You could read the book together at first, then give students the chance to take turns reading a page.

Each booklet also comes with a corresponding worksheet that you can use after reading the book together. This worksheet gives students the chance to write the focus sight word three times. This is great letter formation practice! Any time we can give students some additional writing practice is a win!

The worksheet also has all of the sentences from the book listed so students can read them like a passage. This is perfect for adding some engaging repetition and serves as excellent fluency practice!

If you’d like to use these readers for your small group reading practice, you can find them in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or in my TPT store.

3. Sight Word Sentence Scramble

Sight word scrambles are another fun activity for small group instruction and practice! These activities give students the chance to read sentences containing several high frequency words while focusing on one particular word. 

These sentence scramble activities are perfect for small groups, since you can work through them together and make sure that students are getting the practice and repetition they need.

First, you can read the model sentence together. Then, students can write the sentence on the page. Finally, students can cut out the individual words for the scrambled sentence and put them in order. For an added challenge, students can flip the paper over so they can’t see the model sentence! They can try to rearrange the words on the table without looking at the model sentence.

Once students are confident that they have the words for the sentence in order, they can paste them to the page. Each focus sight word has five different sentence scrambles, giving students the repetition they need to master these sight words!

The five sentences are also included on one printable worksheet, so students can also practice reading them fluently one right after the other. This is such an easy way to help students feel more like readers! It’s great for building confidence and motivating students to keep practicing!

Would you like to use these sentence scrambles in your small groups? You can find this resource in the A Spoonful of Learning shop or on TPT.

Save These Activities for Reading Practice

Be sure to save this post so you can come back to it later! Just add the pin below to your favorite kindergarten board on Pinterest. You’ll be able to quickly find these small group reading activities when you’re working on your literacy lesson plans.