What’s Your Magic Number?

What’s your magic number? I mean for groups. Now, I know that we can’t always choose or that circumstances push you into increasing or decreasing group size for whatever reason. But if you had to choose, what is the group size that you prefer? I work with preschool-6th grade. So for preschool, I prefer no more than two for obvious reasons. In my district, SLPs are involved with preschool if artic is a concern, so we focus on artic rather than language in our sessions (don’t worry, language isn’t forgotten!).

For all other age groups, my magic number is THREE. Why? Because this year I found that I could have 1-2 students working independently on a task (Speech and Language Zoo and my newest Flip & Clip Independent Work will be my go-tos this year), while I worked with the other(s). It worked really well for me. Students all got more individualized attention and probably more so than if I was having them do tasks in a round robin format. Also, three students was good for social discussions!

What about you? What’s YOUR magic number?