I’m
excited to finally share how I do my guided reading groups. I shared earlier that I recently read GuidedReading in Action, which changed my whole approach on guided reading
groups. I absolutely love Jan Richardson’s
model and have really added a lot of her strategies into my lesson
planning. Here is a quick look at what
my typical lesson format is for the week.
I complete one of these forms for each of my groups (4 total). I group my kids by color green, blue, yellow,
and red. These groups are always
changing based on my kids needs and reading levels. The best part about this
structure is that I get a 12-15 minute session with each group EVERYDAY!
Here
is a quick peek at what my guided group must-haves look like. I have four color-coded binders for each
group. These hold my weekly lessons for
that group, blank running record forms, tabs for each child’s progress, and
their high frequency word mastery graphs. I also have color-coded baskets below
where I store my folders. The baskets
are great for placing the groups guided reading books, copies of comprehension
pages, and group games for the week.
Since each colored group is working on different skills the items in
each basket will vary. I hardly ever do the same game with my greens as I would
with yellows because they are all working on mastering a different skill set. I
also have my amazing scrapbook organizer.
I swear by this. You can fit
everything from flash cards, post-its, highlighters, stickers, reading phones,
etc. It is amazing and when I travel for
my RTI small groups. It really comes in handy!
Another
inexpensive thing I love is my over the door hanger from the Target dollar
spot. This works great because I can
hang all my fluency and sight word rings on the hooks along with my bucket full
of Expo markers (a must)!
Alright
on to the good stuff…..This is what my daily
guided groups usually entail.
Monday
Everyday starts off with speedwriting of three of our
sight words. We use the mini dry erase
boards for these and they are perfect. I introduce the
sight words/vocabulary words for the week and words they will be seeing in
their guided reading book. I use our Treasures
book series books for this, so it goes with our weekly words. We then introduce our guided book for the
week and talk about the text features, genre, picture walk, etc.
Now the kids are ready to begin reading on their own.
During this time the kids are whisper reading and I pop in and do a quick
running record on two kids during this time. In order to keep our 12-15 minute time I place
a stop sticker at a halfway point in the text.
This allows for further predicting and also time to finish up. We always
finish the story on day two.
We end our meeting time with a quick accuracy check
with something I noticed from the group. This could accuracy strategies like cover your ending, find a little word inside my big word, etc. We wrap up with Teach 1 Sight Word from the Jan Richardson
model. I love this and it only takes
about 2-3 minutes. I will do a short video over this later in the week.
Tuesday
This day is very similar to Monday. We start off with
our sight word speedwriting and than I start off by asking the kids to tell me
what they can remember from yesterdays book.
This is a good way to note the students that can recall from previous
reading. They continue to finish reading
from their stop mark. This is the day I
focus hard on comprehension strategies.
I created guided reading response sheets to go with each unit in our
Treasures series and they fit perfectly for day two of my groups.
This is a great opportunity for me to reteach a skill
set for the week like inferences, questioning, sequencing, etc. I also can use this as a standard quick check
for a grade. It’s a win-win my friends. Here are some of my kiddos completing the
pages with their books.
Wednesday
This
is one of their favorite days because it is game day! We do still do a quick read from RAZ Kids or
even an on level passage. I love RAZ Kids
for this day because there are printouts available to go with the readings and
you can choose on level text by skills. I try to keep this reading short, so
the kids can play a phonics game. This
is just a few pictures from one of our games last week. This is a freebie if you want it
for next year around Easter. The kids
loved it. You can really find tons of
phonics games that you can use based on your kids needs, but I have a ton of
free ones available for download in my shop along with others for sale like my Pathways Power Pack that has lots of phonics games used for small groups.
Thursday
This day really is exactly the same as Tuesday except
we use a comprehension page from RAZ Kids or I have my own guided reading
comprehension questions that I have made to go with the reading. Sometimes I even have the kids do a circle
map with facts from the story if it’s non-fiction. This can be very flexible. We will finish up with the Teach 1 Sight
Word, which I will post more on later in the week.
Friday
As an educator I really enjoy
Friday for a few different reasons. We
still do our sight word speedwriting, but we really focus on applying those
words into our writing. We do QR Code Word Work Sentences. Each student receives
a sentence that has sight words spelled wrong, missing punctuation, and
capitalization errors. The kids have to read the sentence and then write it
correctly on a laminated sentence strip. They then scan the code to self-check
if they were right. I love this activity and have seen a lot of growth in their
independent writing. On
Fridays I have a little more time to focus on Old Word/New Word or Segment and
Write. I usually allow 5 minutes to do around 3-5 words depending on time.
Well that might have been one
of my longer posts, but I am glad I get to finally share some of my excitement
and new learning’s. I would love to hear some of your go-to strategies for
guided reading. Check back in a few days for a video over my Teach 1 Sight
Word.
Happy teaching and don't forget to check out these books I love so dearly!
I know this is an old post, and I hope you see this. I really like your lesson plan template, and I have been looking for something pretty much just like it. I don't see it in your store.
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