Teaching the Whole Class at the Same Time

Time is an absolutely essential commodity when it comes to teaching. I would rather have 25 lessons with an average driving instructor than five with the very best that's out there. With reading, we seem to have decided that children need texts that fit exactly there what is perceived to be their current level of reading. And so we divide them into groups so that they can have that exact level of text, and then we teach them at that level. This is very much the tail wagging the dog, because the only reason you might want to set children up with a very precise level of text is so that they could learn from it independently.