Guided Reading?

“Guided reading is an instructional approach that involves a teacher working with a small group of students who demonstrate similar reading behaviors and can all read similar levels of texts.”  Okay, that sounds neat.  The text should offer some challenge so that the students can practice and improve, however, they should also be capable of reading the material fluently.  Students should be able to read roughly 90% of the book hassle free.  This is important because students are provided with the opportunity to read independently.  In addition to the reading independence, students are given the opportunity to practice the reading strategies they’ve learned on semi-difficult words.  Even as adults, we occasionally come across words we aren’t the most familiar with.  The opportunity to practice an unfamiliar word may be a fun yet mild experience for the average adult.  However, for young practicing readers, it’s an invaluable experience that builds upon the foundation of their reading ability.

                So, when is a child ready for guided reading?  According to the text, a child seems like appears to be suitable for guided reading once they have a solid grasp of reading strategies.  I’m assuming this ranges from sounding things out to using context clues.  Above all of this is what seems to be the best indicator, whether a student can realize if they’ve read a word incorrectly.  While it may be easy for a student to realize that they don’t know a word, it’s even more impressive for a student to believe they have read a word correctly and then realize that they may have been incorrect.  Although, that last bit is just my opinion. 

                The text then repeats itself for a while until we reach a section dubbed Advantages of a Leveled Book Collection.  So far, I, an educator in training, feel that I have little part in the process of guided reading.  That said, the responsibility of finding, organizing, and seeing that students are reading the appropriate level of book falls upon the teacher.  Which takes us back to the advantages of a leveled book collection.  Apparently, and I quote, the advantages of having a set like this include:

• Providing experience with a wide variety of texts within a level.
• Making it easier to select books for groups of children.
• Lending itself to flexible grouping.
• Providing a way to assess children’s progress.
• Providing a basic book collection that can be expanded over time.

If I’m being honest, I thought this was about to become a sales pitch.  I was prepared to be asked for my credit card information and everything.

The text then sheds some light on how we can level books.  I think it would be silly and time consuming to go through all of this, but I’ll run down a few interesting ones.  When leveling a book, consider how long it is, the genre, its content, the language and literary formats, possible graphical elements and visuals, ideal vocabulary, and so on.