1. Guided Reading How can we make this really effective for our students?
Owhata
18 June

3. Purposes for today To think critically about our guided reading programmes To think about deliberate acts of teaching To set some goals for back in our classrooms.

4. Implications for classroom practice
Sharing learning goals with students
Involving students in self-assessment
Providing feedback that helps students recognise their next steps and how to take them
Being confident that every student can improve

5. Effective Literacy Practice Years 5-8, 2006, p104
In any literacy programme, guided reading has a central role in leading students towards independence in reading.
The focussed group setting enables the teacher to provide strategic instruction in decoding, making meaning, and thinking critically.
Effective Literacy Practice Years 5-8, 2006, p104
It is about explicit teaching
Children need to be aware of what they are learning
Teacher and student need to talk about what has been covered during the lesson
Articulation of learning is critical in that the student and others in the group develop a stronger awareness of their learning

6. Reading and discussing the text
The students take responsibility for reading the text by themselves.
Expected that year 5 to 8 students read silently during guided reading.
Students in a guided reading group should read aloud only when they are citing evidence to support their opinion or comment or when the teacher asks one child to read to them quietly, for monitoring purposes. 

7. Reading aloud
Reading aloud does not mean “round robin” reading. “Round robin” reading is never appropriate in guided reading. It prevents each student from processing the text and constructing meaning independently, distracts and bores other students, and obscures meaning.

8. Be clear about
What you want the child to learn based on identified need
How you will share the intended goal
What the task will be
Which instructional strategy will be the most effective
How you and the student(s) will know the learning has taken place
Teacher acts purposefully to address it
The teacher’s role in discussion is to:
foster enjoyment of the text and a sense of discovery;
maintain the focus by skilled use of instructional strategies such as questioning, prompting, explaining, or modelling;
encourage discussion that relates to the content-related purpose for reading and to the goal-related strategies that students are learning or practising;
encourage students’ personal responses and sharing of insights;
ask students to clarify points they make and to justify them using text-based evidence, for example, by quoting directly from the text, talking about the relevant part of the text, or pointing to the part (words, phrases, or sentences) as they talk;
encourage students to help one another and to develop their metacognition by sharing the strategies they use (using their first languages where possible);
encourage students to ask their own questions of the text, to discover answers to their questions, and to think critically, for example, by querying the author’s inclusions and omissions;
extend students’ awareness of relevant features of texts, for example, by discussing the text’s structure, interesting or unusual vocabulary, or the use of the author’s voice in the text;
give feedback that is specific, informative, and builds further understanding;
engage in genuine conversations about texts with students and encourage such conversations among them, for example, by using “think, pair, share”. There should be an exchange of questions and responses, with all points of view valued and explored.
It is important that the teacher closely monitors the progress of any students who are still establishing their decoding skills and developing basic reading strategies or who are new learners of English. At a time when the rest of the guided reading group is reading a set part of the text silently, the target student can be asked to read the set part quietly aloud to the teacher.

9. Text Selection Text selection is crucial
base selection on intended instructional objectives and knowledge of the learners in the group
check that texts are appropriate to the students’ learning needs and to their backgrounds, interests, and experiences
chosen text may also have links to current cross-curricular topics
Usually the text will be new to the students, although texts can be revisited for a particular learning purpose.
Texts should generally be at an instructional level
refer to Guided Reading: Years 5 to 8, pages 34–40

10. Deliberate Acts of Teaching
Modelling
Prompting
Questioning
Giving feedback
Telling
Explaining
Directing
Integrating instructional strategies
In your planning you need to include...
Learning outcomes for each group
DATs – Teaching points
Name of text and the level
Response to the text (follow-up activity)
Evaluation/reflection for each group

11. self-regulated and intentional reading.
Comprehension strategies are specific, learned procedures that foster active, competent,
self-regulated and intentional reading.
Trabasso & Bouchard 2002

12. Identifying the main ideas
Helps students build knowledge and awareness of how texts are structured and how ideas within a text are related
Students need to retrieve information and summarise it in order to identify the most significant points
May need to use additional strategies as well
Teachers should show students how to identify and clarify the main points in a text by modelling how to formulate questions during guided reading

13. Main ideas Determining
what information is important and combining the main ideas into succinct statements
what is important information and what is the supporting detail
what are the key words, facts, main ideas and main events?

14. Students need to learn to...
Interpret what they believe to be the authors purpose
Link to their prior knowledge
Identify any bias or perspectives strongly supported by the author
Make predictions about what the main idea might be
Infer from implicit information
Synthesise the information
Consider all the evidence and make thoughtful decisions
Explain and demonstrate to others how they arrived at the main idea

15. Possible learning goals
Find clues and evidence to help determine the main idea
Combine the clues and evidence and link them to our prior knowledge
Think about and discuss the main idea that the writer wants us to understand
P172 Davis

16. Main Idea - creating a hierarchy of importance
Before the Reading
Discuss how some information is more important than others
Think about how authors include a range of information
Discuss why this might be
How might an author show how some information is more important than others
During the reading
What are some of the main points the author is making
Why are some points more important than others
Has the author used a special toll to show this
Reading follow up
Use a hierarchy diagram to show the most important information down to the least important information. Write a summary to include the main points.

17. Scanning for main ideas
Before the Reading
Select a factual piece of information
Discuss how to scan over a piece of text identifying key words
Discuss what strategies you need to use to identify useful words (identify
proper nouns and regular nouns)
During the reading
Where are the key words placed in each paragraph
What type of words are the key words
Record a selection during the reading
What do these words tell us
Reading follow up
Write a summary using the key words you have scanned. Try and include all of them in the summary.

18. Prediction
Trying to determine future ideas and events before they appear in the text
Drawing on prior knowledge
Making connections

19. Students need to be taught to
Use clues from the text, before and after the reading (cover, title, subheadings, glossary, illustrations, cover blurb)
Make, verify and revise predictions
Test, monitor and ask questions as they go

20. Possible learning goals
Think about the vocabulary the author uses and predict what might happen next
Predict and read on to check our predictions
Make a prediction and give evidence from our own experience to justify our predictions
Make a prediction and give evidence from the text to justify our predictions
Predict, give reasons to justify, and read on to check our predictions
P.150 Davis
Video insert

21. Following up Why were particular DATs chosen?
How did they scaffold and/or extend the students’ learning?
What else might the teacher have done? Why?
What does this mean for your practice?
Reflecting on your own teaching of guided reading, which DATS do you use?
Do you incorporate the variety of DATs for specific purposes? How do you know? How might you find out?
From what we have seen / talked about what goal do you have / what will you focus on?