Guided Reading Linky

Today I'm linking up with Jen R. at The Teacher's Cauldron to talk about the BEST thing ever....  guided reading!

Here is a newsletter from soooo long ago...  it's a nice summary of guided reading for primary grade teachers.

What I love about guided reading is the time teachers get to have with smaller groups of children. Teachers form very special "reading partnerships" with their students during this time.  Our job is to not just teach them the skills and strategies of reading and comprehension- but- increase confidence, motivation and building independent strategic readers with strategic teacher talk!

Here is an excellent guide for building your teacher talk during guided reading.  This document gives teachers sentence starters and phrases to reinforce good reading work and allow for the reader to explain their thinking.  

Page 1    Page 2

Here are a few examples of lesson plan templates I have used in the past.  I was a reading recovery teacher, so I take crazy, crazy notes to document progress and plan for future lessons.  

That is why you see all those empty boxes!

Guided Reading template by Alicia at Keeping it True in K-1-2

Alicia from Keeping it True in K-1-2  has made a wonderful guided reading template that is so much more structured than my examples.  She is such a smarty, she even included a place to indicate what Common Core Standards were addressed!  You can find it on her Teacher Pay Teacher site.  Make sure you stop by her blog too...  she has wonderful examples of teacher planning binders.  Thanks Alicia for sharing!

My guided reading must have...  awesome leveled readers!  The absolute BEST guided readers come from Rigby and PM Readers (published by Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt).  Why are they so great?  Well, the language that is used in the books is so similar to the language children naturally use.  The books are rich in sight words and the leveling is beyond brilliant.  You can see a child progress so beautifully from level 2 all the way up to level 12.  The authors are so thoughtful about the sight words and sentence complexity used at each level.  The authors also use common inflected endings once you reach a level 3/4 book.  The illustrations and photographs are engaging and become class favorites very quickly.  The little books also have series within each level (books about the same family, characters or towns).  Take a quick look at this on-line sample.  I know you will be impressed!  

Finally, here are some excellent resources to have at your fingertips when working through your guided reading groups...

It's really hard to share all the things I love about guided reading in one post.  Oh my, I could go on and on.  Guided reading builds better readers AND better reading teachers!  Each guided reading lesson gives you the opportunity to build your repertoire of skills as a reading teacher.  It is such a "give and get" process.  The children give you their best reading- and the teacher gives them back purposeful feedback.  The teacher gets the most valuable information about the child's reading abilities and progress- and the little learners get a very unique form of individualized teaching based on teacher talk and reinforcement.  All this from a 10-15 minute guided reading lesson!