Guided Reading

Guided Reading Try It

 Completed during your full week in the field in April.   Write each lesson up separately.

For all 4 lessons – written once

• The members of my group are Isabelle, Noah, Griffin, Charles, and Brielle. These children are all struggling readers, but not low enough to qualify for Title one.
• I chose these readers, because I feel like they are the least worked with group. Some of the excelling children are pulled out to read with the first graders and do guided reading and the struggling readers get pulled out for Title work. These kids only have guided reading once a week and could use a little more practice than some others. I did a running record on all of the “average students” and chose these five because they are all having the same difficulties. I started with a group of four but my mentor really wanted Griffin to work with them also. I realized in doing running records (see attached at bottom) that they are all at different reading levels but have many of the same issues. I found out that they all heavily rely on pictures and have no idea what they are reading. I plan to use books with more general pictures to help them at least look at the text and see if what they are guessing makes sense.
• Names of books you will use and why you will use them?

Brielle (level 1)-

            The whole

            We are going on Vacation

Griffin, Charles, and Noah (Level 2/3)-

            This is Scruffy

            We are going to the Park

Isabelle (level 4)-

            Little Teddy and Monkey

            Baby Sheep

• Given an unfamiliar word, children will look at the first sound and the picture to see what could make sense and on completion of the book, know what it was about.

Lesson 1

I.  Book Introduction

a. Before the reading

Before reading the book I will read “Josh and the big boys” and model what I do when I come to hard words I don’t know. I will read the page and when I come to the words “monkey bars” I will say “Josh walked to the m…. m..” then I will look at the pictures and say “hmm this looks like monkey bars does that fit in my sentence?” “Josh walked to the monkey bars, Does that make sense?” Then I will turn the page and do the same thing again on the next page, but this time I will say “The big boys are on the s…” then I will look at my picture and say playground does that work. They will say no so then I will try it again with slide. I will give each child their book, without really introducing them since they have different books and I don’t want to make a big deal about that.

II. Format

a. During the reading

Children will stay at the front table with me and read their books out loud. I will walk behind them and listen to them read. I will keep a list with all their names and write down things I notice. As they read if they get stuck I will help them use the clues they know.

III. After the reading

a.     After the lesson today, I will have students do a sort of words and pictures that look similar but sound different. I will have word cards around the room and they will have a list in their hand with all the words. They must go around the room with their list and find the number on the card that correspondence to the word of the picture on that card. This will make them learn to start comparing their sounds to the pictures.

IV.  Reflection after each lesson: 

Today went pretty well. I learned that the when the children have the same book they need to be separated. Charles was leaning a lot on Griffin during the lesson even though I know Charles knows how to read. Whenever Griffin got stuck on a word he would get frustrated. I think that they all relied heavily on the pictures and had to be reminded to see if it made sense in the story. I think the “Write around the room” helped the children make sense of finding the word and comparing the sounds. I think that I will come back to this in a few days and see if they remember this lesson.

Lesson 2

I.  Book Introduction

a. Before the reading

Today I will use the same book I used yesterday as an example I will read the first page and then stop and say “Ok, so what did I just read. Hmm Josh wants to play on the monkey bars.” Then I will read the next page and say “Oh so Josh wanted to play on the monkey bars but couldn’t because the big boys are on them.” I will read the rest of the book and then say “ok so this book was about how Josh wanted to do something, but the big boys were playing where he wanted to play so he had to ask them to play. How do I know that? I know that because after every page I summarized what I thought it was about. Now here are your books, and you read them yesterday so you should be able to summarize it because you know the words.”

II. Format

Children will stay at the front table with me and read their books out loud. I will walk behind them and listen to them read. I will keep a list with all their names and write down things I notice. As they read if they get stuck I will help them use the clues they know. I will ask them to summarize after each page I listen to what happened.

III. After the reading

b.     Today they will fill out a paper that asks them about the characters, what happened, and has them draw a picture. This will show me if they see the whole book or just a page or two. I will ask them to remember this when they are doing their own reading and explain that it is helpful when we are reading to see what’s happening and know what we are reading.

IV.  Reflection after each lesson:  This can be handwritten at the bottom of your lesson plan. 

            Today was a little bit rougher. Only Isabella could really summarize her story. Noah could summarize his book, but not really based on what he read, but just on what he thought. Griffin and Charles just picked one page and drew it so I think next time I will model this again for them and them help ask them questions to help them process. I learned how important asking questions was and helping them process. I realize now that this is a difficult skill so helping them along the way is important.

Lesson 3

I.  Book Introduction

a. Before the reading

Today I will use a new book for both the students and as an example. I will read the first page of “Meg’s messy room and then stop and say “Ok, so what did I just read. Meg needs to clean her room.” Then I will read the next page and say “Oh Meg is going to start by picking up her books.” I will read the rest of the book and then say “ok so this book was about how Meg needed to clean her room. At the end of every page I want you to ask yourself ‘what happened on this page?’ Now here are your books you haven’t read these books before so if you come to a word you don’t know remember you can compare the picture to the first sound of you word.”

II. Format

a. During the reading

Children will stay at the front table with me and read their books out loud. I will walk behind them and listen to them read. I will keep a list with all their names and write down things I notice. As they read if they get stuck I will help them use the clues they know. I will ask them to summarize after each page I listen to what happened.  At the end of each page I will say “what happened on this page?”

III. After the reading

Today they will fill out a paper that asks them about the characters, what happened, and has them draw a picture. This will show me if they see the whole book or just a page or two. I will ask them to remember this when they are doing their own reading and explain that it is helpful when we are reading to see what’s happening and know what we are reading. I will ask them questions like “what did meg do?” individualized to their book to help them think through the story.

IV.  Reflection after each lesson:  This can be handwritten at the bottom of your lesson plan. 

Consider writing about 5-12 sentences for this daily reflection. 

            Today was a rough day. Griffin was out today and when we sat down to do it Charles was mad he had to be with me again. Brielle did amazing sounding out her words today and using picture clues but needed a lot of questioning to understand what she read, while I had to tell Izzy a lot of words, but she summarized beautifully. Charles through his book across the room and ended up sitting with his head down during reading time. Noah did really well on both picking out words and summarizing and even asked questions on what he wasn’t sure about. I am not sure what made it click so much more today.

Try to make each lesson (including the reflection) 4 pages or less.  That would be a total of 16 pages for all 4 lessons. 

Lesson 4

I.  Book Introduction

a. Before the reading

Before reading the book I will read “Meg cleans her room” again and model what I do when I come to hard words I don’t know. I will read the page and when I come to the words “teddy bear” I will say “I will start with my t…” look at the picture and then say” stuffed animals does that fit? Let me read my sentence again ‘I will start with my stuffed animals-hmm that doesn’t start with t.. so it must be something else hmm let me look again oh it’s a bear let’s try teddy bear. I will remind them of what we learned yesterday. I will give each child their book, without really introducing them since they have different books and I don’t want to make a big deal about that.

II. Format

a. During the reading

Children will stay at the front table with me and read their books out loud. I will walk behind them and listen to them read. I will keep a list with all their names and write down things I notice. As they read if they get stuck I will help them use the clues they know. I will ask them to summarize after each page I listen to what happened.  At the end of each page I will say “what happened on this page?” I will encourage them to use look at the pictures.

III. After the reading

a.     The students will go back through their book and find any hard words and then as a group we will talk about those words and how we can use picture clues in our personal reading.

IV. Reflection after each lesson:  This can be handwritten at the bottom of your lesson plan. 

I was surprised by how well the children worked today and how much they learned in four days. They all were able to use pictures to some degree to help them decode words. I still had them summarize what they remembered from the book. When they went back to find the hard words, many of the words they were able to remember what they were. I want to continue to help them learn to summarize more than just one page at a time.

V. Overall Reflection of the Guided Reading Experience: (This is done once after completing all of your lessons.) (2-3 pages). 

             

            Overall, I think I have a lot to learn about guided reading. At the end of everyday I felt really lost and wasn’t sure what to do the next day. I knew what my two goals were in this, but I didn’t really feel like they grew. I was surprised at the end how some of them were using picture clues and one of them could summarize the story. I feel like there is still a lot of work to be done in this area with these children. 

            The thing that worked really well, was modeling. I would model every morning before I gave them their books and by the end they knew what I was expecting. They were able to see my expectation first hand and knew exactly what I was looking for. I know this because sometimes they copied exactly what I wrote when I modeled it and did exactly what I said. I am not sure it accomplished its full purpose though because it took them a while to do what I was asking them to do.

            If I were going to do this differently in my own classroom, I would definitely work with the same group for more than one week. The children got frustrated because they were with me for four days in a row but I don’t feel like we accomplished a lot. I see now why people level reading, because them all reading different books made it hard to teach one concept since I couldn’t talk about it with all of them as a group but one at a time. I would also try to pick books where they picture help, but the students still have to look at the sounds to understand the words. I don’t feel like they were using the phonemes as much as the pictures.

            If this were my classroom and I was planning for next week, I would do something that made the children really look at what’s happening on each page and how that contributed to the whole story and then look at the story as a whole, and summarize what it was about. I would probably have them identify main words or phrases during the reading of the story with a sticky note. Then I would have them go back and retell the story only using the sticky notes. Finally I would use what they marked to help them go back and make a complete story and help them summarize what they read. I may need to work in smaller groups for children to do this though.

            I am not really sure I learned the basic principals of guided reading, but the things that I found to be important where the modeling and discussing the strategy with the children at the beginning of the lesson, having them read out loud so I could observe them, and applying it to their lives. I feel like the things I am still a little confused on is the after reading and what to do with kids who are at different levels. I totally understand, why leveling groups are bad, but I am really struggling with how to give each one what they need and help support their reading, if each one has a different book and is looking at something completely different. 

            I feel like keeping up with many groups like that would be challenging and I am afraid that by the time I got back to one group they would have forgotten everything that they learned the last time we talked. I guess I am struggling to see the advantage of guided reading over reading conferences or what else new it has to offer that the children don’t get somewhere else. What is the difference between setting a goal in reading conference and grouping them with a goal for guided reading?  I  know that it is important in daily 5 and as a foundation to literature but I guess I am not sure how it is different from everything else. It seems like between reading conferences, read allowed, shared reading, and daily 5 we already cover everything we cover in this guided reading.

            Overall I think this is an area I could learn a lot in and have a lot of room to grow.