Guided Reading Advice for a Quality Literacy Hour

Guided Reading provides opportunities for teachers to stimulate children’s interest in reading and guide them to read a wide range of texts, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Guided Reading sessions also enable teachers to assess their children.

Using Literacy Links Plus is an excellent way to ensure that children develop positive attitudes to reading as they:

• develop strategies enabling them to make
  sense of what they read
• explore language and literacy features of texts
• respond critically to the ideas and concepts in texts

Q. How do I group children?

A.
Guided Reading should be conducted with small groups of children (ideally 5-6) who need assistance in the same area of reading. By working together toward common understanding, the children within the group learn from and support each other. If the group needs to be much larger, then the teaching may be more effective in a Shared Reading experience.

Q. What texts should I use?

A.
It is important that the texts chosen for Guided Reading lessons should not be familiar to the children in the group. Lessons are planned so that the children are supported in working with material they can read almost independently, but which requires some challenge to help them learn strategies to apply elsewhere.

The Guided Reading session should last about 10-15 minutes. The texts should meet the following requirements:

	other publishers
Cater for a range of abilities/needs from early to independent readers.	?
Represent a variety of genres/text types.	?
Cover a variety of book formats, sizes and styles.	?
Cater for a variety of interests.	?
Produce high quality publications.	?
Have accessible and helpful teacher support material.	?

Q. What does Guided reading involve?

A.

• Tell the children the purpose of the session (e.g.
  develop concepts about print, literacy features,
  critical response), and give each child a copy of the
  selected title.
• Identify the necessary background experience of the
  group (e.g. discussing unfamiliar vocabulary or
  format) as this provides the appropriate support
  structures or prompts during the discussion. It should
  not be a question and answer session.
• The children read the book independently at their
  own pace while the teacher makes reading
  assessment observations (by moving around the
  group to briefly hear each child read). There should
  not be any round-robin reading by children. Prepare
  quiet follow-up work for those children who finish
  earlier than others.
• Invite the children to share responses to the book
  and reflect on their application of the teaching focus.
  Provide feedback on observations and clarify any
  vocabulary difficulties.
• Any follow-up activity must support the teaching.