Guide
Records for small-group instruction
Small groups are efficient to teach and awkward to record. One lesson happened, but four students responded four ways, and each of them needs an individual record for the file. The trick is to record once and rate four times.
In short
Record a small-group lesson as one session with one rating per student. The lesson, date and minutes are shared; the rating and any review item are individual. That keeps entry to a minute and gives every student a record that stands on its own for reports and meetings.
One session, several ratings
Enter the lesson once for the group. Then rate each student in turn: Secure, Developing, Needs support. A student who was absent is marked absent, not skipped, so their record shows the gap.
Keeping the group together
Groups drift. When one student needs review and the others do not, the review item belongs to the student, and the group's current lesson still advances. When a student falls more than a few lessons behind the group's pace, that is a regrouping conversation, and the ratings are the evidence.
The individual record
Every student's page should show the group sessions as their own sessions: date, lesson, minutes, rating. A file reviewer should not be able to tell which sessions were group and which were one-to-one except by a label.
What the group view is for
Planning. Who in this group needs support on what, and what the next lesson is. It is not a report; reports are per student.
In Literacy Trail
Groups are on the Educator plan. A group session records the lesson once and asks for one rating per student; everyone advances in a single step, absences are recorded per student, and each student's page shows the session as their own. Bulk actions handle catch-up and re-rating.