Guided Reading

After reading Anita Iaqunita's article, Guided Reading: A Research-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction, I was enlightened to acquire some new facts on guided reading. Did you know that the early years are the focus for prevention of reading difficulties because those who begin to lag behind demonstrates that children who get off to a poor start in reading rarely catch back up.

It is estimated that one in three children experience significant difficulties in learning to read. Accroding to stats from Iaquinta's article, a child who is a poor reader in first grade is 88% more likely to remain a poor reader in fourth grade.

Guided reading has become what is known as "the best practice" for today's balanced literacy instruction, and is a great tool to help usher young readers into stronger fluency.

According to Iaquinta, guided reading has three different purposes:

1. to meet the varying instructional needs of all the students in the classroom, enabling them to greatly expand their reading powers.
2. to teach students to read increasingly difficult texts with understanding and fluency
3. to construct meaning while using problem-solving strategies to figure out unfamiliar words that deal with complex stench structures, and understand concepts or ideas not previously encountered.

As a teacher, we should consider the level of the child's ability in reading, and make groups accordingly. The teacher's goal in guided reading it to, "Strive to provide the most effective instruction possible and to match the difficulty of the material with the student's current abilities.:

With this said, material should provide a challenge that is just right for the student. A couple questions I will leave you with:

1. How do you balance pushing a student enough, but not too much when it comes to level of guided reading?
2. What are ways you can make sure you are not overlooking the student's personal needs when orchestrating guided reading?

To the right is a great work sheet that the whole class can use and apply to their specific level. This way, kids do not feel as singled out if they are in different groups.