Saturday, May 21, 2011

Guided Reading Suggestions?

Hello All! A lot of teachers at my school, with the exception of 5th grade, use short stories or text excerpts to teach their guided reading groups. Their beleif is that the focus should be on the reading strategy/skill learned versus just listening to/helping a student decode. I agree that it is important to focus on teaching reading strategies/skills but I see so many 2nd and 3rd graders moving up into their new grades,  not reading chapter books. Even a lot of the students who are well able to read and comprehend a more complex chapter book will still grab picture books or easy readers for their book bins because they have gotten used to reading short texts (which by the way does not help with stamina during the end of the year standardized tests).

This is how I plan to do my guided reading next year (Next year my grade level will be switching students (grouped by reading levels) for 90 min. a day for reading and writing. Within the class I get I will split them again into 4 or 5 groups and differentiate for each level):

  • Reading Read-Aoud or Mini-Lesson (10 min.) -It is in these whole group lessons that I plan on introducing and teaching the reading skill/strategy that guided reading groups will be working on that week. I will have all of my groups working on the same skill/strategy at the same time with different texts.
  • Writing Mini-Lesson (10 min.)
  • 4 Centers/Rotations (15 min. each) While I see 4 reading groups a day the other students will be rotating through centers doing:
    • word work
    • write to self
    • read to self
    • read to somone
    • listen to reading
    • reading extension activities
    • library visit
    • lit. circles/book clubs (My students will meet 3 times a week with their groups, without me, to read, discuss, and do some activities for a chapter book of their choice.)
  • Author Share (10 min.) 3 or more students will share something from their writing journal with the class
I am a new teacher so any feedback or suggestions are welcome. How do you do reading groups and does it work for you? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

3 comments:

LaNesha Tabb said...

Can I ask a few questions? =)
Does your school mandate or encourage any particular method? What you have looks like a combo of readers and writers workshop/daily 5?

This is helping me as well because there is a tiny chance that I might be a literacy coach next year and this is the kind of thing they do! haha

Adrienne said...

My principal just wants to make sure that you are meeting with your lowest group(s) everyday and the other groups frequently. She requires teachers to turn in all of the guided reading plans for each group at the end of each quarter She looks for the skills/strategies taught and to make sure you are adequately differentiating. Because every teacher plans differently some don't put the book or passage used. Every teacher has many sets of books in their classroom from the school to use and I think she assumes they are using them when many aren't. Our school also has a membership with readinga-z.com so many teachers use those books, which are AWESOME, but are short and don't help with stamina.

However, the principal does strongly encourage, but not mandate, the daily 5.

Ashleigh said...

I think that we each have to find what works for ourselves and our students. I have minimal experience with Daily 5, because we have to follow the Fountas and Pinnell guided reading. I do think that it is important that all students have some independent reading daily. I know my struggling readers do everything they can to get out of reading. As a third grade teacher I also see the challenge of transitioning students from reading picture books to chapter books (not that anything is wrong with picture books).