A Guide for Guided Reading- Part 3

 Now that you have your readers making predictions and looking through their text, it's time for the next step for guided reading. This is (in my opinion,) the most exciting part. It's time to actually read! Now that the students have predicted what the book will be about, and their interest is sparked, they will spend the next part of the session reading. Many teachers ask; What should I be doing during this time? The answer is there are many things that can be done, however, it depends on what goals you set before the session for your student group. You will know your students best, and therefore make informed decisions about how the session will run. Here are a few different suggestions for where to start: 

Print work/ Fluency: Many teachers use this time to work with struggling readers on print work and fluency. As you listen to your student reading, review decoding strategies and encourage students to reread the sentence after all words have been decoded. Demonstrate how to use intonation by reading a paragraph out loud, and have the student read it immediately after. Some might argue that this is also better practiced during a shared reading session, and I agree to an extent. If a student is working on the early reading level, more individual attention will support the reader to grow in these areas. 

Vocabulary/Context Clues: Guided reading is a great time to work with all the students in the group (as well as individually) on understanding vocabulary. Ask students to point out words they are not familiar with. Use questions to prompt their thinking about what the word could mean given where they are in the text, background knowledge, and other words that could provide possible clues to the meaning of the word. 

Comprehension: This is a broad area that I'll expand on in a follow-up post. To summarize, students can work on answering W.A.B questions. W= within the text, A= about the text, and B- beyond the text. If you're not sure where to start, have the student summarize what he/she has read so far, and see which types of questions are appropriate for him/her. I always include a challenge level question to use as an "active take-away" to try with another story during independent reading. 

Writing about reading: Guided reading affords the opportunity to have students write about what they read. This can be structured readers' response questions to practice W.A.B questions. It can also serve as an opportunity for students to keep an interactive notebook to have them create their own ways of journaling and reflecting. I often refer to the book What Do I Teach Readers of Tomorrow by Gravity Goldberg and Renee Houser. This book has given me a lot of inspiration how to introduce readers' notebooks to younger students. 

The most important part to keep in mind is that students should be both reading and discussing during this time. At some point the group should discuss the story and compare strategies they used to comprehend. Although meeting with students individually is important, time is of essence. The main purpose is to guide the students in the group together and allow for peer support. Individual conferring time is better suited to go into more depth and detail about specific needs. When students start to summarize the story, have them pause to add details in to support the speaker, and model your own strategies when needed. 

I'm excited to share more in another post about comprehension during guided reading, but for now here are some final thoughts: 

Keep students' needs in mind when planning strategies and skills to practice during the guided reading session. Keep time in mind- focus more on students reading, and commencing as a small group to discuss the story together. Keep modeling and prompting as needed; it's not a quiz, but a time to offer support. Keep encouraging students to share when they recall from the story and share what strategies they used... every bit counts and helps!