What does it look like?

• Teacher works with small groups of students using text at their instructional level, as they practice and apply previously taught strategies and skills
• Other students are reading and writing in a workshop environment

What does it provide for students?

• Practice applying comprehension strategies and skills
• Focused instructional support for all students
• Opportunities to develop speaking and listening skills

How is it implemented?

• Form reading groups based on assessed instructional needs
• Meet with all groups on a regular basis
• Select reading material for each group based on:
• Instructional level match of text and students
• Literature or content area standards
• Support the students’ use of previously taught strategies or skills
• Gradually release the responsibility for learning from teacher to student

In guided reading, “students are encouraged to share their thinking, try out what they’ve been learning, and, with teacher support, approximate, regulate, and expand their reading competency.”

Regie Routman, Reading Essentials , 2003

Guided Reading in Grades 1 and 2 focuses on:

• Automatically recognizing common words
• Comprehending what is read
• Reading  fluently
• Integrating a range of strategies
• Correcting and monitoring
• Working with words

Guided Reading in Grades 3-5 focuses on:

• Studying and talking about literature
• Learning to read informational texts
• Internalizing more sophisticated comprehension strategies
• Using reciprocal teaching
• Learning to read texts across the curriculum

A guided reading lesson often follows the format below:

• Identify a necessary skill or strategy for a group of students and select an appropriate text
• Help students activate prior knowledge
• Introduce necessary vocabulary and preview the text
• Students predict what will happen or what will be learned
• Students read the text
• After reading, analyze the predictions
• Students model their use of the strategy or skill, teacher supports and models as necessary
• Students respond to the reading and discuss how the strategy or skill was useful

Reciprocal Teaching Review