Reading is Thinking. Thinking is Reading:
A Day in the Life of Your Literate First Grader
ANSWERS TO YOUR FAQ ABOUT GUIDED READING:
Q: Why isn't my high level reader reading chapter books as part of guided reading?
Q: Why is my at-grade-level reader bringing home guided reading books that ostensibly may seem “too easy” for him/her?
To begin, our primary reason for reading is for meaning. We want students to truly understand what they have read and be able to talk about it orally and in writing. Guided reading is very different from independent reading, where students spend time reading books of their choice at their “just right level” (i.e. books they can read and understand independently). On the other hand, guided reading is teacher facilitated and highlights essential components and strategies of reading. Guided reading books are used as a springboard to discuss and build those skills. Particularly at the lower levels, they are not necessarily books that students would pick up and read on their own or that you would read to your child for pleasure, though as students become more adept readers, the texts do become more “mainstream.” Guided readers are designed to be guides for instruction.
During a guided reading lesson, I am not only teaching decoding strategies, but showing children how to connect their thinking to the author’s thinking. As a result, we spend two days in an instructional context on any given guided reading book. During this time, I elicit background information from students, do a mini-lesson on a phonetic concept or a reading convention like intonation and phrasing, and help students do a picture walk through the text. During the picture walk, students gain valuable information about the story and the words that they might see in it. They are getting their minds ready to find and associate those words with what they see in the pictures. After this introduction, we stagger read the text. One student begins reading, then another, and another. What it sounds like is all students whisper reading at their own pace at the same time. I then key in on specific children and have them “turn up the volume” and read more loudly so I can hear them. In this way, all students are reading the story independently and are able to gain their own sense of meaning from the text while I am able to assist individual students who may need support. This is different from the kind of round-robin reading that some of you may have done as students where one child read one page and then the next child read the second page and so on. Reading in this way really breaks up the meaning of the story for young readers, who often will only focus on their page of the text. Consequently, they do not get the sense of the story as a whole. By stagger reading, the entire group’s focus does not get disrupted if one child needs assistance and each child can read at his/her own pace for meaning.
After the story is read—most children will read the book at least twice during the initial read through--and I have listened to every child read, we talk about the story’s content and focus on comprehension skills. In sum, during reading group, I am looking for students to process the information in the text in order to gain its basic or literal meaning. I am watching and teaching students how to use word solving strategies, how to monitor for meaning and how to self-correct. During and after reading, students should be able to summarize the main ideas and discard irrelevant information. That’s a lot going on from one book!
So…by the time your child brings home his/her reading book, he/she should have a firm grasp of its content and be able to read it smoothly and fluently. Re-reading is very important for fluency and comprehension. Your children spent at least two days in an instructional context learning about new books and practicing reading and working on comprehension strategies in the text with me. Please continue to have them read the books in their book bags while you read higher level books aloud to your child. By reading higher level texts to your children, you will be constantly providing a model of what good readers sound like and your children will gain valuable background information and vocabulary. Visit the library or book store to find additional just right books for your child to read independently at home. The general rule of thumb is that if a child finds five or more words “tricky” on any given page, the book is too difficult.
Also, be mindful of the book’s content. This is especially important for higher level readers, who, though they may be able to decode more sophisticated text, may not be developmentally ready to process, visualize, or conceptualize the information in them. Genres like historical fiction and fantasy require the reader to use a wealth of background knowledge. Fantasy requires abstract reasoning to process alternate realities. Biographies can contain stories of hardship, persecution and war. Sarcasm and tone can also impact the level that is appropriate for a reader, since most children this age cannot developmentally grasp sarcasm. In general, children are comfortable reading about characters about two years older than themselves.
For higher readers, who may be natural decoders with strong visual memories--they see a word once and they know it--using our guided readers to build fluency, intonation, and phrasing is key. Though they read well, they often need practice recognizing punctuation and how to read with expression. These students read chapter books during independent reading time and can do so at home. For now, our guided readers are used to highlight comprehension strategies which are essential for these children. This group of readers tends to do a lot of reader's theater work where they are able to build their fluency and work on phrasing. High quality picture books are still appropriate for all level readers (Mrs. Cushing even loves them herself!).
Because writing and reading are so integrally linked, during the second day of guided reading we re-visit the text and work on written extensions where we focus on making connections, extending our thinking about the text, deciphering the author’s purpose, summarizing main ideas, thinking beyond the text by making inferences about information that is not explicitly given in the story, and expressing opinion about the text. As a result, our guided reading book becomes a springboard for enriching conversation and writing about what students have just read. Every child has written about each book he/she has read this year.
I keep track of students’ progress by analyzing their written responses to text and by taking and evaluating running records. During a running record I am monitoring a student’s miscues, noting self corrections, and keeping track of the reader’s phrasing and fluency. Combined with the written extensions to text, I then use the running record to better differentiate and inform instruction for students in each reading group.
