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Guided reading is "small-group reading instruction designed to provide differentiated teaching that supports students in developing reading proficiency". [1] The small group model allows students to be taught in a way that is intended to be more focused on their specific needs, accelerating their progress.
Guided reading was introduced as a method of teaching reading in England and Wales in 1993, [2] through the influence of the National Literacy Strategy (later superseded by the Primary National Strategy). It is no longer supported by the Primary National Strategy [3] from England's Department for Education.
In the United States, Guided Reading is a key component to the Reading Workshop model of literacy instruction. Guided Reading sessions involve a teacher and a small group, ideally of two to four children although groups of five or six are not uncommon. The session would have a set of objectives to be taught during a session lasting approximately 20 minutes. While guided reading takes place with one group of children, the remaining children are engaged in quality independent or group literacy tasks, with the aim of allowing the teacher to focus the small group without interruption. Guided Reading is usually a daily activity in English and Welsh primary school classrooms and involves every child in a class over the course of a week. In the United States, Guided Reading can take place at both the primary and intermediate levels. Each Guided Reading group meets with the teacher several times throughout a given week. The children are typically grouped by academic ability, Fountas and Pinnell reading levels, or strategic/skill-based needs.
There is a lack of research on Guided Reading, but some studies have found it to be beneficial for students. In South Africa, The Literacy Leadership Project were able to let four Foundation Phase teachers implement Guided Reading for students of the Aregorogeng Primary School. Over the course of eight months, results were able to demonstrate an improvement in student's engagement and motivation on literacy. [4] Another study from Canada indicated that about 80% of 25 middle school students who received Guided Reading had an increase in reading proficiency. [5]
Although there are positive aspects to this type of reading instruction, there are also two main challenges that exist at every grade level. According to Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, "some students will work on very basic reading skills such as word analysis and comprehending simple texts"[ page needed ] while other students may be working on more advanced reading skills and strategies with increasingly challenging texts. [6] In addition, "all students need instructional support so they can expand their competence across a greater variety of increasingly challenging texts".[ page needed ] [6] Thus, it takes a lot of strong planning and organization from the part of the teacher in order to successfully implement Guided Reading so that it meets the needs of all learners. Simultaneously, "a teacher's goal is to strive to provide the most effective instruction possible and to match the difficulty of the material with the student's current abilities. Materials should provide a challenge that is 'just right' for the students". [7] Guided Reading is a complex approach and teachers are essential in the development and execution of a Balanced Literacy program.
A critical component of the Reading Workshop is text selection; it must be purposeful and have the needs of the learners in mind. According to Fountas and Pinnell, [6] as a teacher reads "a text in preparation for teaching, you decide what demands the text will make on the processing systems of the readers." Texts should not be chosen to simply teach a specific strategy. Rather, the texts should be of such high quality that students can apply a wide range of reading comprehension strategies throughout the reading. "One text offers many opportunities to learn; you must decide how to mediate the text to guide your students' learning experiences". [6] [ page needed ]
Before reading: a teacher will access background knowledge, build schema, set a purpose for reading, and preview the text with students. Typically a group will engage in a variety of pre-reading activities such as predicting, learning new vocabulary, and discussing various text features. If applicable, the group may also engage in completing a "picture walk". This activity involves scanning through the text to look at pictures and predicting how the story will go. The students will engage in a conversation about the story, raise questions, build expectations, and notice information in the text. [6]
During reading: the students will read independently within the group. As students read, the teacher will monitor student decoding and comprehension. The teacher may ask students if something makes sense, encourage students to try something again, or prompt them to use a strategy. The teacher makes observational notes about the strategy use of individual readers and may also take a short running record of the child's reading. The students may read the whole text or a part of the text silently or softly for beginning readers. [6]
After reading: following the reading, the teacher will again check students' comprehension by talking about the story with the children. The teacher returns to the text for teaching opportunities such as finding evidence or discussing problem solving. The teacher also uses this time to assess the students' understanding of what they have read. The group will also discuss reading strategies they used during the reading. To extend the reading, students may participate in activities such as drama, writing, art, or more reading. [6]
Adult with group. Prepare the children, providing support through reading the title, talking about the type of text, looking at the pictures and accessing previous knowledge. Aim to give them confidence without reading the book to them. If necessary, locate and preview difficult new words and unfamiliar concepts or names. A variety of books/genres can be used.
Adult with group. Introduce or review specific reading strategies that the children have been taught and remind them to use these when reading.
Individuals. Children read the book at their own pace. Monitor individuals and use appropriate prompts to encourage problem-solving. Praise correct use of reading strategies.
Adult with group. Briefly talk about what has been read to check children's understanding. Praise correct use of reading strategies.
Adult with group. Encourage children to respond to the book either through a short discussion where they express opinions, or through providing follow-up activities.
"Individuals." Provide a 'familiar book' box for each group, containing texts recently used in Guided Reading. Children can re-read texts to themselves or with a partner as an independent activity to give them opportunities to develop fluency and expression and build up reading miles.
There are three models of guided reading that can be used based upon the above structure depending upon the National Curriculum (NC) level that the group is reading at. The models do overlap.
This model is used for children who are reading up to about NC level 1A/2C. In this model the book introduction, strategy check, independent reading, return to text and response to text all take place generally within one session. This is aided by the fact that the books suitable for children reading at this stage are very short. [8]
This model is used for children who are reading at NC level 2C to 3C/B. Generally two guided sessions will be needed to read a book. The first session generally focuses on the book introduction, strategy check and independent reading. Whilst children are reading at their own pace, it is important to start to introduce an element of silent reading. This is to develop the skills of meaning making when reading independently. Because books at this stage are generally longer, it is not possible to read the whole book in one session. Once the children have done some reading in the session they can be asked to read the rest of the book prior to the second session. This session then focuses on returning to the text and responding to the text. These are the more able children and not those at level 1
Readers working at a NC level of 3B upwards will need the fluent model of guided reading. Here it is not necessary for children to read the text during the guided sessions. At these levels children can generally decode the words. What is important is that they discuss the meaning that they make from the text which will form the basis of the discussion. Therefore, the session tends to focus on return to text and response to the text with the strategy check implicit in the discussions.
Phonics is a method for teaching people how to read and write an alphabetic language. It is done by demonstrating the relationship between the sounds of the spoken language (phonemes), and the letters or groups of letters (graphemes) or syllables of the written language. In English, this is also known as the alphabetic principle or the alphabetic code.
Reading for special needs has become an area of interest as the understanding of reading has improved. Teaching children with special needs how to read was not historically pursued due to perspectives of a Reading Readiness model. This model assumes that a reader must learn to read in a hierarchical manner such that one skill must be mastered before learning the next skill. This approach often led to teaching sub-skills of reading in a decontextualized manner. This style of teaching made it difficult for children to master these early skills, and as a result, did not advance to more advanced literacy instruction and often continued to receive age-inappropriate instruction.
A KWL table, or KWL chart, is a graphical organizer designed to help in learning. The letters KWL are an acronym, for what students, in the course of a lesson, already know, want to know, and ultimately learn. It is a part of the constructivist teaching method where students move away from what are considered traditional methods of teaching and learning. In this particular methodology the students are given the space to learn by constructing their own learning pace and their own style of understanding a given topic or idea. The KWL chart or table was developed within this methodology and is a form of instructional reading strategy that is used to guide students taking them through the idea and the text. A KWL table is typically divided into three columns titled Know, Want and Learned. The table comes in various forms as some have modified it to include or exclude information.
Reading comprehension is the ability to process written text, understand its meaning, and to integrate with what the reader already knows. Reading comprehension relies on two abilities that are connected to each other: word reading and language comprehension. Comprehension specifically is a "creative, multifaceted process" dependent upon four language skills: phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
Synthetic phonics, also known as blended phonics or inductive phonics, is a method of teaching English reading which first teaches the letter sounds and then builds up to blending these sounds together to achieve full pronunciation of whole words.
Interactive writing has been described by Swartz (2001) as "a teaching method in which children and teacher negotiate what they are going to write and then share the pen to construct the message." Interactive writing is a cooperative event in which text is jointly composed and written. The teacher uses the interactive writing session to model reading and writing strategies as he or she engages children in creating text.
A literature circle is equivalent for young people of an adult book club, but with greater structure, expectation and rigor. The aim is to encourage thoughtful discussion and a love of reading in young people. The intent of literature circles is "to allow students to practice and develop the skills and strategies of good readers".
Adolescent literacy refers to the ability of adolescents to read and write. Adolescence is a period of rapid psychological and neurological development, during which children develop morally, cognitively, and socially. All of these three types of development have influence—to varying degrees—on the development of literacy skills.
Shared reading is an instructional approach in which the teacher explicitly models the strategies and skills of proficient readers.
Reciprocal teaching is an instructional activity that takes the form of a dialogue between teachers and students regarding segments of text for the purpose of constructing the meaning of text. Reciprocal teaching is a reading technique which is thought to promote students' reading comprehension. A reciprocal approach provides students with four specific reading strategies that are actively and consciously used to support comprehension: Questioning, Clarifying, Summarizing, and Predicting. Palincsar (1986) believes the purpose of reciprocal teaching is to facilitate a group effort between teacher and students as well as among students in the task of bringing meaning to the text.
Reciprocal teaching is best represented as a dialogue between teachers and students in which participants take turns assuming the role of teacher. -Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar
Balanced literacy is a theory of teaching reading and writing the English language that arose in the 1990s and has a variety of interpretations. For some, balanced literacy strikes a balance between whole language and phonics and puts an end to the so called reading wars. Others say balanced literacy, in practice, usually means the whole language approach to reading.
Literacy in the United States was categorized by the National Center for Education Statistics into different literacy levels, with 92% of American adults having at least "Level 1" literacy in 2019. Nationally, over 20% of adult Americans have a literacy proficiency at or below Level 1. Adults in this range have difficulty using or understanding print materials. Those on the higher end of this category can perform simple tasks based on the information they read, but adults below Level 1 may only understand very basic vocabulary or be functionally illiterate. According to a 2020 report by the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of adults in the United States have English prose literacy below the 6th-grade level.
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch.
The directed listening and thinking activity (DLTA) is a strategy that was first identified by Stauffer (1980). It is used with early childhood students or students who are not yet successful independent readers. Teachers use this strategy to establish a purpose for reading with their students. With the use of this strategy students can become engaged in a text that they could not otherwise read on their own. Students are prepared to listen to a story that will be read by their teacher by being given specific information that they are to focus on as they listen. The strategy utilizes pre-reading, reading, and post-reading questions and discussions. Teachers use this strategy in an attempt to build on the knowledge that students already know and apply it to new information and situations. Students are provided with a framework to organize and recall information from storybooks. The directed reading and thinking activity is a very similar strategy that can be applied once this strategy is mastered and students become more advanced, independent readers.
Emergent literacy is a term that is used to explain a child's knowledge of reading and writing skills before they learn how to read and write words. It signals a belief that, in literate society, young children—even one- and two-year-olds—are in the process of becoming literate. Through the support of parents, caregivers, and educators, a child can successfully progress from emergent to conventional reading.
Fountas & Pinnell reading levels are a proprietary system of reading levels developed by Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell and published by Heinemann to support their Levelled Literacy Interventions (LLI) series of student readers and teacher resource products. In its marketing material, Heinemann refers to its text levelling system by the trademark F&P Text Level Gradient.
The gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model is a particular style of teaching which is a structured method of pedagogy framed around a process devolving responsibility within the learning process from the teacher to the eventual independence of the learner. This instructional model requires that the teacher, by design, transitions from assuming "all the responsibility for performing a task...to a situation in which the students assume all of the responsibility". The ideal result is a confident learner who accepts responsibility for their own learning and directs this learning through the cognitive processes involved, moving through the academic spectrum, to independent choice. As Buehl (2005) stated, the GRR model "emphasizes instruction that mentors students into becoming capable thinkers and learners when handling the tasks with which they have not yet developed expertise".
READ 180 is a reading intervention program, utilizing adaptive technology, in wide use by students in Grades 4–12 who read at least two years below grade level. It was created by Scholastic Corporation.
Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) was developed in 1993 by Dr. John T. Guthrie with a team of elementary teachers and graduate students. The project designed and implemented a framework of conceptually oriented reading instruction to improve students' amount and breadth of reading, intrinsic motivations for reading, and strategies of search and comprehension. The framework emphasized five phases of reading instruction in a content domain: observing and personalizing, searching and retrieving, comprehending and integrating, communicating to others, and interacting with peers to construct meaning. CORI instruction was contrasted to experience-based teaching and strategy instruction in terms of its support for motivational and cognitive development.
Gay Su Pinnell is an American educational theorist and a professor emerita at the School of Teaching and Learning at Ohio State University. She is best known for her work with Irene Fountas on literacy and guided reading a whole language teaching framework which layed the groundwork for the Fountas and Pinnell reading levels.