Guided Reading

Included in a balanced literacy program is guided reading. There are several reasons that it should be at the center. It gives children the chance to work on their skills as individual readers while interacting with their peers. It gives the teacher an opportunity to observe how the student is handling new text. It gives the reader a chance to develop their own reading strategies that help them to navigate increasingly difficult text. It allows children meaningful and successful reading experiences. It helps develop the skills needed to learn to read independently. It helps children learn how to peruse new books and reading materials. But how does guided reading work?

In times past the whole class read aloud in a guided reading experience. You remember the drill, down the row it went one person reading a paragraph and then on to the next person. This was a great experience if you were a proficient reader, but if you weren’t it was often a source of great embarrassment and emotional upset. For the rest of the class meaning was often lost as they waited for a reader to sound out words and painfully finish their portion. Today guided reading is something a bit different.

Guided reading should be done in small groups with similar reading levels. This means the material read will all be at their reading level offering a positive experience in which the reader gains confidence and reading strategies appropriate to their needs. In essence it is a win-win situation. Teachers are also able to track the progress each student is making with much more accuracy and clarity.

The teacher introduces the book to the students before anyone reads anything. The pictures are looked at and discussed and new words are noted with the teacher requesting each student find the word in the pages of the book. Often the teacher will read the material aloud before asking the students to read the book silently. After this each student reads the whole book aloud to the teacher. If many students have problems with the same areas of the text the teacher may point out the word in question and discuss it more. Then to end the activity all the children read the book aloud in unison. Generally the book is only studied once with no additional activities but not always. The book is most often put in a box that holds books students may read during free time of SSR. (sustained silent reading)

That’s it in a nutshell. Guided reading really allows the teacher to evaluate each child’s reading progress more often. Of course children are grouped and re-grouped often so that they continue to be with other readers of similar reading abilities.

Source

Fountas, Irenen C. and Pinnell Gay Su, Guided Reading, Heinemann, Portsmouth, NH, 1996