Guided ReadingHow can we make this really effective for our students?

Owhata 18 June

Purposes for today

To think critically about our guided reading programmes

To think about deliberate acts of teaching

To set some goals for back in our classrooms.

Implications for classroom practice

•Sharing learning goals with students

•Involving students in self-assessment

•Providing feedback that helps students recognise their next steps and how to take them

•Being confident that every student can improve

In any literacy programme, guided reading has a central role in leading students towards

independence in reading.

The focussed group setting enables the teacher to provide strategic instruction in decoding, making

meaning, and thinking critically.

Effective Literacy Practice Years 5-8, 2006, p104

Reading and discussing the text

• The students take responsibility for reading the text by themselves.

• Expected that year 5 to 8 students read silently during guided reading.

• Students in a guided reading group should read aloud only when they are citing evidence to support their opinion or comment or when the teacher asks one child to read to them quietly, for monitoring purposes.

Reading aloud

Reading aloud does not mean “round robin” reading. “Round robin” reading is never appropriate in guided reading. It

prevents each student from processing the text and constructing meaning independently, distracts and bores

other students, and obscures meaning.

Be clear about• What you want the child to learn based on

identified need• How you will share the intended goal

• What the task will be

• Which instructional strategy will be the most effective

• How you and the student(s) will know the learning has taken place

Text Selection• Text selection is crucial

• base selection on intended instructional objectives and knowledge of the learners in the group

• check that texts are appropriate to the students’ learning needs and to their backgrounds, interests, and experiences

• chosen text may also have links to current cross-curricular topics

• Usually the text will be new to the students, although texts can be revisited for a particular learning purpose.

• Texts should generally be at an instructional level

refer to Guided Reading: Years 5 to 8, pages 34–40

Deliberate Acts of Teaching

• Modelling• Prompting• Questioning• Giving feedback• Telling• Explaining• Directing• Integrating instructional strategies

Comprehension strategies are specific, learned procedures that foster active, competent, self-regulated and intentional reading.

Trabasso & Bouchard 2002

Identifying the main ideas

•Helps students build knowledge and awareness of how texts are structured and how ideas within a text are related

•Students need to retrieve information and summarise it in order to identify the most significant points

•May need to use additional strategies as well

•Teachers should show students how to identify and clarify the main points in a text by modelling how to formulate questions during guided reading

Main ideas

Determining • what information is important and combining the

main ideas into succinct statements

• what is important information and what is the supporting detail

• what are the key words, facts, main ideas and main events?

Students need to learn to...•Interpret what they believe to be the authors purpose•Link to their prior knowledge•Identify any bias or perspectives strongly supported by the author•Make predictions about what the main idea might be•Infer from implicit information•Synthesise the information•Consider all the evidence and make thoughtful decisions•Explain and demonstrate to others how they arrived at the main idea

Possible learning goals• Find clues and evidence to help determine the

main idea

• Combine the clues and evidence and link them to our prior knowledge

• Think about and discuss the main idea that the writer wants us to understand

P172 Davis

Main Idea - creating a hierarchy of importance

Before the Reading

• Discuss how some information is more important than others• Think about how authors include a range of information• Discuss why this might be• How might an author show how some information is more important than others • During the reading• What are some of the main points the author is making• Why are some points more important than others• Has the author used a special toll to show this • Reading follow up• Use a hierarchy diagram to show the most important information down to the least important

information. Write a summary to include the main points.

Scanning for main ideas

Before the Reading

•Select a factual piece of information•Discuss how to scan over a piece of text identifying key words•Discuss what strategies you need to use to identify useful words (identify proper nouns and regular nouns) During the reading•Where are the key words placed in each paragraph•What type of words are the key words•Record a selection during the reading•What do these words tell us Reading follow upWrite a summary using the key words you have scanned. Try and include all of them in the summary.

Prediction

• Trying to determine future ideas and events before they appear in the text

• Drawing on prior knowledge

• Making connections

Students need to be taught to•Use clues from the text, before and after the reading (cover, title, subheadings, glossary, illustrations, cover blurb)

•Make, verify and revise predictions

•Test, monitor and ask questions as they go

Possible learning goals• Think about the vocabulary the author uses and predict what might

happen next

• Predict and read on to check our predictions

• Make a prediction and give evidence from our own experience to justify our predictions

• Make a prediction and give evidence from the text to justify our predictions

• Predict, give reasons to justify, and read on to check our predictionsP.150 Davis

Following up• Why were particular DATs chosen?• How did they scaffold and/or extend the students’

learning?• What else might the teacher have done? Why?• What does this mean for your practice?• Reflecting on your own teaching of guided reading, which

DATS do you use?• Do you incorporate the variety of DATs for specific

purposes? How do you know? How might you find out?• From what we have seen / talked about what goal do you

have / what will you focus on?