I have huge classes this year and have tried small groups, but the other students are playing around on the computer, not reading, etc. . How do you do small groups? How large are your small groups? How often do you do them? What is the rest of the class doing?
I did classes with as few as four and as many as 10 kids in a group. Everyone else has to have a task that they are doing, and they have to be able to work independently, which can sometimes be a struggle. Some years I had classes of 20, and other years I had classes of 36. I didn’t do any of them on a regular basis, just as needed.
We as a school have gone to small group instruction this year. The biggest thing is getting the kids to understand the expectations and putting in place checks to make sure they're doing what they should be. We have goguardian to monitor the RAZ or Lexia or typing and can remotely close kids' tabs and block all sites except where they're assigned to be. The model is generally a 4-station rotation where one station is direct instruction, one is applying the direct instruction, one is review, and one is a learning app or free-reading/writing. They know if they don't complete the tasks and don't show adequate effort that they'll be finishing the task during PAT/homeroom, lunch, or recess. Groups of ~5 is what we do, but it's not always even numbers depending on how many kids are at what level. It's flexible ability-grouping. It's an experimental year to see if this is what it takes to get the kids back to where they would've/should've been if the pandemic hadn't happened.
