What exactly do you mean by “Guided Reading”?

Guided Reading has developed a variety of different meanings.  In this post, I will be referring to guided reading as a small group reading structure most appropriate with students in the primary grades (K-2) still focusing on constrained reading skills (alphabetics, phonemic awareness, phonics, automaticity and fluency).  During a guided reading lesson, teachers use leveled text to explicitly teach and support students to read increasingly complex text.  The gurus of this small group structure are without a doubt, Fountas & Pinnell.

Assessment and Goal Setting:

The process begins by assessing a student’s reading level.  This is most comprehensively done using the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment System.  This assessment will identify a student’s independent, instruction, and frustration levels while uncovering other essential reading behaviors.  Students are then grouped in small groups of 4-6 based on their instructional reading level.  Once the group’s level has been decided, looking through the Literacy Continuum is very helpful in determining goals that will best support the reader’s growth.  Finally, the teacher selects an appropriately leveled text for the group to read. 

Lesson Structure:

A typical guided reading lesson will take about 20 minutes.  The lesson begins with an introduction to the text.  This might include activating (or providing) background knowledge, using new vocabulary words in conversation to discover their meaning, discussing the structure of the text, or drawing attention to the writer’s craft.  Students then independently read the identified section of text as the teacher listens-in, coaching students through confusion as needed by modeling, prompting, and reinforcing effective strategy use.  This is the “beef” of a guided reading lesson, supported time in text.  When students have completed the reading, the teacher leads a short discussion of the text, observing what students say about the text and helping them pose questions to better understand.  The next step is a brief, but explicit, demonstration of a specific strategic action, the previously determined goal, (solving words, adjusting reading for purpose/genre, summarizing, inferring, monitoring, analyzing, etc.) referring back to any part of the text that has just been read.  The lesson concludes with word work based on student need (teach any aspect of word analysis that you observed as needed).  Students can be sent off with a reading response task to extend the meaning.  This might include responding to the text in writing, drawing or discussion.

Instructional Support:

If you are a K-2 teacher and interested in digging deeper into any aspect of guided reading (assessment, goal setting, lesson structure) contact your literacy coach.  Both of us have been working with teachers in Student Centered Coaching cycles through this process. 

Joanne Harmsen (Lincoln & Washington) jharmsen@owatonna.k12.mn.us

Libby Zeman (McKinley & Wilson) ezeman@owatonna.k12.mn.us