Guided Reading In Reception..

[Guest]

Im part of a 2 year intake in a Primary school and were told the other week we have to start Guided reading every week with all children even though i stated i didnt feel the majority were ready for this.

 

So i could really do with some ideas that you do for guided reading this early on??? Also, with you more able children (in my case the ones who know some key words and are starting to blend) do you have them reading the text individually at their own pace during guided or each reading a line?

 

Im new back into Reception after a long break hence my lack of ideas

[Guest]

I have started Guided reading, but only with those who can blend - we started on pink level books, reading things such as I can run with my friend. This week we read the book together decoding words we could and remembering others. NExt week we'll look at it in more detail.

With the rest of my class, my ta took them in two small groups and shared a story with them. That way they were getting the comprehension skills, but without reading, which would have been too hard from them. My head said that this was fine, and that I only needed to do proper Guided Reading once the children were able to read independently and blend words.

 

Sorry if thats not much help, but that's how I am working it this year.

[Tigger]

We play reading games, games based around stories the children know really well, HFW lotto etc. Most of these I have made myself and if you google Helen Bromley you will find her book 'book based reading games' I think it'd called? (it is at school) which has some great ideas too.

 

The children love these games so much we continue to use them even when they areconfidentally reading. I would still use the first stage books with children who weren't blending because it is an idea way of teaching book based language anbd reading skills.

S

[KST]

I do exactly the same as jemilyjones. I also do phonic games in groups as another activity in the week.

[Susan]

You can use Guided Reading to teach very basic reasing skills such as tracking the print, identifying left to right and top to bottom skills, find words or phonemes, teach tricky/ HFW words. Also to extend vocab. I dont think in the early stages you need to worry about the children accessing the text independently. Remember to do a walk through of the text.

[Guest]

I recently went on some training for this and we were categorically told that guided reading is NOT about getting each child to read a line in turn. Children who can read should be attempting to do so independently, with you 'tuning in' to each child in turn to ensure they are reading properly and guide them towards good reading strategies.

 

Those who can't read should be given time to independently enjoy the book all the same, but this time encouraging them to use the pictures to read the story. Obviously this will be much briefer than if they could read, but after a couple of minutes (obviously judge it on your children) you come back together and talk about what you think is happening in each picture in order to tell the story as a group. If possible it is also good to have some small world stuff to aid in the retelling of the story, but obviously that isn't always possible. It takes a while to train children into this, the first few times they might just flick through every page really fast and say they are finished, but you need to persevere and teach them to look quietly at the book until its time to come back together. Once they've learnt that this is expected they soon start to look at the pictures in more detail.

 

Readers and non readers should be encouraged afterwards to talk about the story and the characters, even those who read should be encouraged afterwards to talk around the picture to 'read' more into the story as usually the text is rather simple (and, dare I say it, boring in some books!). Guided reading is more about comprehension than actually learning to phonetically read, which is why the focus isn't on hearing every child read individually. In fact the training also recommended that guided reading sessions should more often than not use a book slightly below the children's reading ability in order to put the focus more on comprehension skills, although obviously this is more difficult in reception.

 

Individual reading and shared reading are the main times for teaching good text reading strategies (amongst other things, I'm not saying this is the sole purpose of these sessions!), whilst phonics sessions are the time for teaching phonetic strategies and tricky words. That's not to say these can't be mentioned in guided reading, or that occasionally you can't have a guided reading session which focuses on these, but the majority of the time the main focus should be comprehension and developing awareness of stories, poems or information texts.

Edited November 15, 2009 by Guest

[Guest]

That's interesting.

 

I have started to do it with my more able group, but doing a page/line at a time. This has worked well as it has been useful to help them practise tracking the text (those not reading), and so on, but maybe I shouldn't be doing it like that. I find that, when they start reading, they all 'want' you at the same time, so to take turns reading gives them all the sense that their great reading has been heard. Don't know though....

[emmajess]

Have you had a look at the Early Reading DVD? That's got some nice examples of very early guided reading, although the accompanying booklet has some advice in it that I don't agree with... But it was interesting to watch.

[Guest]

That's interesting.

 

I have started to do it with my more able group, but doing a page/line at a time. This has worked well as it has been useful to help them practise tracking the text (those not reading), and so on, but maybe I shouldn't be doing it like that. I find that, when they start reading, they all 'want' you at the same time, so to take turns reading gives them all the sense that their great reading has been heard. Don't know though....

 

This was what I did until I had this training recently. They were saying how the point is to develop independent reading and the idea of reading for themselves and for meaning rather than reading for the teacher's praise. Actually if you are 'tuning in' to each child's reading, you are still giving them individual attention anyway but whilst you are doing that the rest need to be making their own independent progress through the book and you might not get to 'tune in' to every child every session since independent reading time shouldn't be overly lengthy. At the end there should be time to talk about the book and ask/answer questions or retell the story from the pictures etc. and this should be the main focus of the guided session.

 

Since books for this age group tend to be so short I usually read the book to them myself at the end of the session, getting them all to track the text at the same time. That way I'm still teaching that skill, but it isn't taking up the entire session whilst we wait for each child to struggle to sound out every word. Young children find it difficult to retain a story anyway so if they are listening to other children struggle to sound out words they naturally get bored and actually lose the thread of the story anyway.