What Is Guided Reading?
Guided Reading is a critical component in a balanced literacy program for the elementary school classroom. It is the designated time of day when students are explicitly and thoughtfully taught strategies to understand and make meaning from text.
What Are Some of the Goals of a Guided Reading Program?
Some of the goals of a Guided Reading Program are:
- to choose books for the lesson sequence that are at the students’ instructional level (not too hard, not too easy)
- to guide small groups of students (with similar skills) through a series of levelled texts that increase in difficulty as their skills grow
- to introduce new vocabulary, concepts and content
- to teach students to make connections, form questions, make predictions, determine what is important and to make inferences
- to practise ongoing assessment
- to shift students from group to group as their needs change throughout the year
- to have students experience success
- to foster the joy of reading
What Is a Balanced Literacy Program?
A balanced literacy program creates a positive learning environment in which each student has the opportunity to learn the variety of strategies needed to become a fluent reader and writer. A balanced literacy program includes:
- Guided Reading and Writing
- Independent Reading and Writing
- Shared Reading and Writing
- Modeled Reading (reading aloud) and Writing
A Guided Reading Lesson Plan Sequence
by Terri Mack
Strong Nations Publishing, 2012
ISBN 978-1-927571-53-8
$7.00, 16 pages, ages 5 – 8, index
strongnationspublishing.com
This book is one title from The Strong Readers series. The series consists of 80 titles with four books at each reading level: 1 to 20. On Our Hike describes a hike through the forest and the various animals that are sighted along the trail. At the end of the book the animals are ordered from the smallest to the biggest. The Talking Together notes provide the educator with opportunities to engage the students in the reading group in partner talk.
Date: Monday, October 19, 2015
Group: Jackie, Laura, Cori, Ken, Adam.
Level: 6
Title: On Our Hike
Frog Facts: Level 6
Crossing the River: Level 6
Frog Can Do Many Things: Level 6
This is an opportunity for students to read instructional level text for 5 minutes at the beginning of each lesson. The educator could perform a quick running record on one student at this time.
Every day one of the comprehension goals is focused on. The goal could also be integrated throughout the day and across the curriculum.
- accessing prior knowledge
- making connections
- questioning
- predicting
- making meaning
- inferential thinking
- what is important
- visualization
- metacognition
Every day an opportunity is provided to explicitly model a decoding strategy for making meaning from text
- semantic: does it make sense?
- grapho-phonic: does it look right?
- syntactic/structural: does it sound right?
Strategies might include: skip the word and read on and then go back, chunk the word up, look at the pictures for clues, etc.
Sight Words: all, are, at, on, saw, squirrel, that, tree
The text drives the word choice (e.g., word families, blends, digraphs, long and short vowels, sight words, etc.).
The chosen words could translate into your spelling program with the difference being that the words are being taught in context.
“The picture on the cover reminds me of…….” etc.
Choose one of the “before reading” strategies to explicitly demonstrate
- accessing prior knowledge
- making connections
- questioning
- predicting
This is supporting success for the team read and building students’ own background knowledge.
Read the title of the book together:
“Tracking fingers ready, at the count of 3, let’s read the title of the book….”
As your reading progresses through the book remember to fade your voice out and give the ownership of the reading to the students.
Stop and check for understanding along the way.
Focus on: questioning
“I wonder who made those tracks we see in the mud?” (page 10)
Use one “before the reading” strategy or one “during the reading” strategy as needed:
During Reading
- making meaning
- inferring
- determining what is important
- visualizing
Before Reading
- making connections
- questioning
- predicting
Look at the index together.
“On which page will you find the picture of a mouse? a squirrel?”
“Can you use the index to find all the animals?”
Choose one text feature to explore (e.g., index, labels, captions, speech bubbles, bold words, etc.).
Look at the animals on pages 15 and 16.
“The animals that were seen on the hike are put in order from the smallest to the biggest. I remember having seen things that were small and things that were big. Here is what I remember: (Model this by drawing on the chalkboard. Label the drawing.)
Now draw some small things that you have seen on one side of your paper, then flip the paper over and draw some big things that you have seen on the other side.”
Choose a lesson extension that develops higher level thinking skills and promotes the inclusion of all learners (e.g., Venn diagrams, charts, webs, draw what you know, etc.)
Brenda Boreham
Brenda has 35 years of classroom experience. She has presented workshops on literature-based themes and literacy strategies and has written a number of resources for teachers. She remains passionate about matching up kids with books.
This article is from Canadian Teacher Magazine’s Sept/Oct 2015 issue.