This post is part of a four-post series with information related to our Primary Guided Reading Workshop conducted on October 6, 2015.

See related posts: Insights on Guided Reading, Elements of a Guided Reading Lesson, Model Lesson

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Here are some of the questions and concerns that came out of last Tuesday’s Guided Reading Workshop. In this post, I attempt to answer or address these to the best of my ability.

Do we divide students into groups based on reading levels or based on specific reading issues?

Both. The most common way to form reading groups is by level. I would recommend starting here for anyone who is relatively new to teaching guided reading. However, when grouping students by level it is still important to be noticing individual student needs and to address them in reading conferences inside and outside the guided reading lesson. Another way to group students for guided reading is based on specific reading issues. These are usually called CAFE groups where the focus is either Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, or Expanding Vocabulary. I have the CAFE teaching resource in my office if anyone is interested in exploring this second option more in depth.

How do I maintain motivation for Word Work/Write About Reading throughout the year?

Keep the activities open and authentic. Give students choice within structure. Focus on quality over quantity. Differentiate the activities so they are not too easy and not too hard for students. Keep the students working toward reachable learning goals and involve them in keeping track of their progress. To be honest, I haven’t run into the problem of “maintaining motivation” for either of these activities. When students are doing the activities once a week for a clear purpose, with clear expectations, with choice, and with quality feedback, they work hard to become better readers and writers.

I think running a guided reading lesson in 20 minutes is a challenge for upper levels.

I absolutely agree that this is a challenge, but I also agree with keeping the lesson to 20 minutes. Part of the challenge is selecting the right text for higher-level readers and remembering that a rigorous text doesn’t have to be long. In fact, for guided reading I would recommend shorter passages at higher reading levels or an excerpt (chapter or section) from a longer text. Keep in mind that a guided reading lesson has a different purpose than a literature study and the task is not to “teach the book” but rather to expand student’s reading power at their instructional level (just above their independent level so they should be successful with a small amount of strategic instructional support and scaffolding).

Check out NewsELA or NewsELA Elementary for shorter, leveled passages.

I’m still doubtful about not “talking about levels” to parents. I feel they still need to know where their kids are and where they need to be.

I assume that this concern comes from the following quote in the Insights on Guided Reading document:

Educators have sometimes made the mistake of thinking…that all of the books students read should be leveled. We have argued against the overuse of levels. We have never recommended that the school library or classroom libraries be leveled or that levels be reported to parents.

-Fountas and Pinnell

I think what is important to take away here is that Fountas and Pinnell are arguing against the overuse of levels. Of course using levels has an instructional and communicative purpose among teachers, between teachers and parents, and between teachers and students. The problem is when we cross the fine line between use and overuse of levels. We don’t want students being defined by or stigmatized by their reading level and we don’t want to stifle a student’s love for reading by always limiting them to leveled-texts. Students need to learn to choose books effectively based on purpose and interest as well as comprehension.

How can I keep students accountable for their reading jobs in an organized way that allows me to continuously track progress and check in with all students? What rubrics do you use?

Fountas and Pinnell recommend introducing a “Letters Due” chart during the First 20 Days of setting up Reader’s Workshop (Guiding Readers and Writers, page 155). It is worth a try and is probably the ideal answer to this question, but to be honest, I couldn’t realistically hold myself to this schedule. Instead, I collected student notebooks every Friday after Reading Workshop when students were supposed to be done with their reading jobs. Sometimes whose notebooks I was going to check was announced and sometimes it was unannounced. Sometimes I collected all notebooks but most of the time I collected about five or six notebooks so I could check in with each student at least once every month. In the beginning, you probably need to check in with every student at least every other week and for some students you need to continue to check in more often than others.

I also occasionally substituted small group Write About Reading reviews for guided reading so students could receive feedback from their teacher and their peers. Then, they did their own reflection and goal-setting on what they needed to do to improve Write About Reading.

See Feedback Template.

Finally, I used the following rubric for general notebook checks. I have level 3 descriptors on the rubric and space for written feedback so the student knows what they are doing well and what they need to improve. I would adjust the rubric or add to the rubric if I needed to collect data on other, more specific reading or writing benchmarks.

See Reading Notebook Check.

What is reading job probation?

This isn’t as severe as it sounds but serves as an intervention/problem-solving process for students who are struggling to complete their weekly reading jobs. In third grade, my students were given the opportunity to choose their reading jobs pretty freely after lots of modeling and practicing of routines and expectations. After a certain period of time, students who struggled using time wisely and completing their reading jobs went on “reading job probation.”  Reading job probation is simply a chart that students fill out to document how they are using their independent work time and the choices they are making for their reading jobs. They have to meet with the teacher throughout the week to conference about their choices and show the progress they’ve made on their work (this is usually during the first five minutes of snack or recess since there is a lack of other opportunities time wise). At the end of the week, the students have to get the Reading Job Probation Chart signed by their parents.

See Reading Job Probation Chart.

What do you do with the anecdotal notes you took during Guided Reading?

The anecdotal notes I took during guided reading are used to inform what strategic actions I will focus on in future guided reading lessons. They also guide the individual conferences I do with students during guided reading time. These are an essential part of the teaching-learning cycle for guided reading. I write down my observations and then record in “next steps” what I need to teach or follow-up on with a particular student.

Does our English program fit in or should we drop it?

At Colegio Bolivar we don’t have an “English program” but rather follow the balanced literacy approach to teaching reading and writing. Guided reading is an essential part of balanced literacy so it needs to fit somewhere. That may mean reevaluating, re-prioritizing, and adjusting current instructional practices but not necessarily dropping anything completely.

I am not comfortable with the idea that students are reading to themselves during guided reading. I feel like it is a rare opportunity for students to read out loud. 

Reading out loud is great for developing students’ fluency and accuracy. But fluency and accuracy account for only two of Fountas and Pinnell’s twelve strategic actions of competent readers. Once students have mastered the skill of reading fluently and accurately, there is really no need to continue practicing during guided reading. Students need to work on the other less obvious and more complex reading skills. Even if a student does need to work on fluency and accuracy, having them read out loud one at a time in guided reading doesn’t give them much practice. They should all be reading out loud simultaneously in this case. To have students continue to practice reading out loud, I would recommend opening up a space for this somewhere else in the reading block by making “Read to Someone” a reading job. Guided reading time is precious and should be more responsive to students’ needs.

I have heard before that activating prior knowledge before reading a book creates a disadvantage for students who don’t have prior knowledge on the topic and those who have prior knowledge about the topic could be biased while reading the text.

I think this points to the importance of being strategic about text introductions. While there are many potential teacher moves for introducing a text (including activating prior knowledge), guided reading teachers strategically choose only the moves that will appropriately scaffold students to further develop students’ own repertoire of strategic actions. Sometimes this means activating prior knowledge, sometimes it is explicitly providing the background knowledge so all students are on the same playing field, and sometimes it is omitting prior knowledge and expecting students to make connections as they read and problem solve on their own.

See Introduce the Text: Potential Teaching Moves in Elements of a Guided Reading Lesson.

I think I need to restructure my current guided reading program to make it more effective.

This is a courageous statement that shows genuine, thoughtful reflection. This is part of becoming a more competent and more effective teacher. I hope everyone had this take-away from the workshop to some extent and is making adjustments – big or small – to their approach to guided reading to make it more effective. I encourage everyone to take the time necessary to make changes.

Where do I begin?

Knowing where to begin comes from first knowing where you are at. Perhaps, for some, the first step is to continue to explore the philosophy behind guided reading. As Fountas and Pinnell say, “To change our practices in an enduring way, we need to change our understandings.” It may be necessary to first reevaluate beliefs and attitudes about reading instruction so as not to “bring our old thinking to a new practice” (from Insights on Guided Reading). This is a huge factor in successful implementation and should not be overlooked or taken for granted. After that, it is essential to have routines in place, meaningful reading and writing jobs for students to work on independently, and effective classroom management. Finally, once this foundation is in place, we can begin to refine our actual guided reading instruction. It’s a long journey, but it starts with a single step.