Guided Reading

This semester, students in READ 3325.20B were asked to contribute a post to this blog.

By Denisse and Sonia

Reading is the most important foundation to a person’s education.  Reading is used in all subjects, such as science, math, social studies, language arts and any class you have in school. Likewise, reading is essential in our daily lives from reading safety signs on the road to reading our mail, our prescriptions, and groceries. Therefore, reading plays an important role in our daily lives. It is believed that reading to our children before they are born helps them become good readers later in life.  Reading is essential in life to encounter better opportunities; more so, it allows the human brain to expand its knowledge. As future educators, we encourage parents to read to their children since they are in the womb. When parents or teachers read to children they are guiding them to a world of learning by opening successful and rewarding paths.  Thus, guided reading is a great way to lead our students into those pathways.

For a teacher, the main purpose of guided reading is to hear and analyze the students’ reading in order to provide positive feedback to the students afterward. In addition, making sure that students become independent readers with approximately 90% accuracy.  Guided reading is a great technique that helps students in different skills such as word knowledge, comprehension, and fluency. Providing students with reading pointers or markers during guided reading is a great strategy and fun activity that teachers utilize in order for students not to skip a line while reading or get lost in their reading.

Guided reading is done in small groups of 4 to 6 students using a constructive approach to help students become fluent readers.  Guided reading should take about 15 to 20 minutes daily. After guided reading is conducted both the teacher and students have a discussion about the reading.  This discussion helps students to better understand the story and gain new vocabulary that the teacher might present from the reading.  During guided reading, it is important that student read books or passages that are appropriate to their reading level so their readings are easy to understand/comprehend. Additionally, during guided reading it is important for teachers to provide a copy/ book to each student in order for them to follow; otherwise, the child will become easily distracted by their surroundings if they don’t have something in front of them to focus on.