Guided Reading Guided reading enables students to practice strategies with the teacher’s support, and leads to independent silent reading.

Retelling Inferring Summarizing Predicting Critiquing Fluency Character Development Vocabulary Summarizing Decoding Strategies Analyzing Word Meanings Story Elements Skimming and Scanning Predicting Making Connections (personal, to another text, to the world) Retelling Fluency Critiquing Sequencing

Guided Reading? As teachers, we provide the range of experiences and the instruction necessary to help children become good readers early in their school careers. All children possess the fundamental attributes they need to become literate, and some may have developed a great deal of expertise in written language by the time they enter first grade. But most children need teaching and a balanced literacy program which regularly provides several kinds of reading and writing. By reading aloud, teachers help children experience and contemplate literary work they cannot yet read. In shared reading, children participate in reading, learn critical concepts of how print works, and get the feel of reading. Guided reading leads to the independent reading that builds the process; it is the heart of a balanced literacy program.

What Is Guided Reading? Guided reading is a context in which a teacher supports each reader’s development of effective strategies for processing novel texts at increasingly challenging levels of difficulty. The purpose of guided reading is to enable children to use and develop strategies “on the run” They are enjoying the story because they can understand it; it is accessible to them through their own strategies supported by the teacher’s instructions. They focus primarily on constructing meaning while using problem-solving strategies to figure out words they don’t know, deal with tricky sentence structure and understand concepts or ideas they have not previously met in print.

The Essential Elements of Guided Reading Before the reading During the reading After the reading Teacher Selects an appropriate text, one that will be supportive but with a few problems to solve Prepares an introduction to the story Briefly introduces the story, keeping in mind the meaning, language, and visual information in the text, and the knowledge, experience, and skills of the reader Leaves some questions to be answered through the reading “Listens in” Observes the reader’s behaviors for evidence of strategy use Confirms children’s problem-solving attempts and successes Interacts with individuals to assist with problem solving at difficulty (when appropriate) Makes notes about the strategy use of individual readers Talks about the story with the children Invites personal response Returns to the text for one or two teaching opportunities such as finding evidence or discussing problem-solving Assesses children’s understanding of what they read Sometimes engages the children in extending the story through such activities as drama, writing (graphic organizers( art, or more reading. Children Engage in a conversation about the story Raise questions Build expectations Notice information in the text Reads the whole text or a unified part of to themselves (softly or silently) Request help in problem solving when needed Talk about the story Check predictions and react personally to the story or information Revisit the text at points of problem solving as guided by the teacher May reread the story to a partner or independently Sometimes engage in activities that involve extending and responding to the text (such as drama or journal writing)

Children who are learning to read need to: Enjoy reading even when texts are challenging. Be successful even when texts are challenging. Have opportunities to problem-solve while reading. Read for meaning even when they must do some problem solving. Learn strategies they can apply to their reading of other texts. Use their strengths. Have their active problem solving confirm. Use what they know to get to what they do not yet know. Expand their knowledge and understanding through reading. Make connections between texts they have read and between their own world knowledge and reading.

BUILDING ON EARLY LEARNING

Strategic Reading By practicing literacy, children discover what it is for and what it is about, another advantage for the child entering school. Important early behaviors include “talking like a book” is the child’s attempt to “read” by reproducing a text that has been heard several times. Sometimes such approximation appears spontaneously even when the child is looking at a book not heard before, but “talking like a book” usually happens with favorites heard over and over. During reading time in a kindergarten class, Keyeara and two friends sit together, each with a copy of The Three Little Pigs, which they have heard many times. They approximate the text as they dramatically read together, “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in…..” They are enjoying the story; their focus is on the meaning and they are displaying their knowledge of language. They are not matching their language with the print on this difficult story and they may not notice many of the print details (such as letters or punctuation) unless they have particular meaning (such as enlarged letters or a big exclamation point). They are expanding and using two important systems of information that will help them become good readers ---meaning and language structure.

Simple books like this one allow children to anticipate and look at each word, checking their predictions with the print. The topic is familiar; they already know just about what the book is going to say, so early literacy behavior is fully supported. As teachers we want to direct children’s attention to using multiple sources of information in a skilled way. We can do this by giving children the opportunity to read many texts that offer just the right amount of challenge (not to hard and not too easy) Children’s use of cues and strategies becomes integrated as they read easy texts fluently. The processes are not used consciously but are more automatic, allowing the reader to give more attention to new information. Children who are learning to read must construct the complex, in-the-head problem-solving processes that are characteristic of good readers and develop self-extending systems that enable them to keep on learning to read more difficult texts.

Teaching is Critical Literacy is constructed by each child individually but this does not mean he does it alone. Literacy learning is facilitated by interactions with other, more knowledgeable readers. The role of caregivers and teachers is critical in children’s opportunities to become literate. Teachers encourage children by noticing evidence of effective processing. Teachers help students attend efficiently and meaningfully to visual information in print and to use that information in a dynamic way in connection with their knowledge about language.