Guided Reading

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Simply put guided-reading is teaching reading to a levelled group of students using a text that is slightly challenging.  With the support of the teacher the students are guided to overcome the challenge of the text, read more independently and in doing so improve their reading. 

Read more on the SharpReading Website

In the first year or two of learning to read students need to break the code. They need to learn what letters are, how letters make sounds and become words and hold meaning.  Often this requires the learning of phonics (the sounds that go with letters) and how sentences work (ie we read from left to right) and then this learning is put into practice with a guided reading routine. The routine is key for students to be able to put all their new reading skills together... read more here

Understanding what you read is paramount. Without understanding, reading is pointless and so it stands to reason that we must read and think about what we read.  This has great power if we can do it as we are reading. A small percentage learn to do this intuitively but for the large majority this is a skill that needs to be learned.  Guided Practise that encourages students to think and not just brush over the words and be first to get the end of the sentence... read more about reading comprehension.

You will be blown away by what students are able to do if you have scaffolded their reading development through extensive practice of reading comprehension. 

With this practice in place your students will have the mental space to move away from book club thinking into well constructed analysis.  They, not you, need tools to analyze and summarize texts.  This pulls you out of asking a range of higher order thinking questions and puts you clearly into evaluating their success.  more here...