Description: The purpose of Guided Reading is to provide a framework or scaffold in which students are given assistance in order to read a selection successfully. Students’ reading is guided and re-guided until they can successfully guide themselves. Level 2 emphasizes close and focused reading of a text. It requires students to gather information and organize it around important ideas. It requires accuracy as students reconstruct the author’s message. With a strong factual base, students work from a common and clear frame of reference. They are in a position to elaborate thoughtfully on the text and its implications. The GRP is a highly structured activity, and should be used sparingly as a training strategy – perhaps once a week at most. It is used to emphasize the importance of rereading text.
Step-by-Step (Basic)
- Students preview text and identify unfamiliar words.
- The class discusses strategies that can be used to make meaning from the text.
- Students will then decide which strategies will best support their personal reading.
- Teachers are the facilitators as students connect their personal knowledge and reading strategies to the words in the text.
- Teachers regroup students for small group instruction. In mathematics, students who are struggling with integers are grouped for specialized instruction to achieve mastery. In science as students struggle with the concept of osmosis, the teacher provides them with group instruction using a different print or non-print text.
- Whole group and individual students share how they used strategies, reflect on success and contemplate pitfalls.
- Finally, students return for whole group instruction for final reflections and evaluations.
Step-by-Step (Level 2)
- Prepare students for reading by clarifying key concepts. Determine what students know and don’t know about the topic or concept to build appropriate background. Establish a purpose for the reading.
- Assign a reading selection of 1,000 to 2,000 words or approximately 10 minutes. Give this direction to focus on reading behavior, “Read to remember all you can.”
- Instruct students to turn their books face down when they complete the reading. Ask them to share what they remember in the order it was presented. Record it on the chalkboard/overhead.
- Encourage students to recognize the items they have failed to remember or recall accurately. Simply, there are implicit inconsistencies that need correction and further information must be considered. Two important questions to ask now are. . . .
- What information is missing that might be important?
- What facts are confused, unclear, or mixed up and need to be rearranged or reorganized?
This reinforces the importance of selective rereading and rehearsal because of the limitations imposed by short-term memory.
- Redirect students to the reading and review the selection to correct inconsistencies and add further information.
- Organize the recorded details into some kind of outline. Ask guiding, non-specific questions to facilitate the process . . . .
- What were the important ideas?
- Which came first?
- What facts on the board/overhead support it?
- What important point was brought up next?
- What details followed?
- Extend questioning to stimulate an analysis of the material and a synthesis of the ideas with previous learning.
- Provide immediate feedback, such as a short quiz, as a reinforcement of short-term memory.
Guided Reading Template (basic)
Guided Reading Template (level 2)