Small group literacy instruction is an essential component in primary-grade classrooms. As a way to improve small group instruction, recent recommendations have noted small group instruction should include skills focused groups. This article describes an investigation in a first-grade classroom where students participated in skills-focused small group instruction during the school year. In an effort to help other teachers and teacher educators learn from our inquiry, we describe in this article the insights gained from our implementation of skills focused small group instruction and the benefits and challenges of implementing this grouping variation.