In my 4K classroom I have just
started implementing guided reading with a small group of my highest
students. I began when we came back
from Christmas because these students have shown me that they are ready for
this new challenge. This semester I have
my lower functioning students pulled out three times a week to work on letters
and letter sounds so I thought this would be a perfect time to challenge my
early readers. During this time I have
only 12 students left in my classroom which provides me with a great
opportunity to break into smaller groups and target my student's individual
needs. During this time my assistant
works with half of the students on a variety of literacy skills while I pull my
higher students for a guided reading group.
I began by introducing my students to “Bob” books. The school has purchased several of sets of
these for our classrooms and my own daughter enjoyed these books as well when
she was in 4K.
I really enjoyed reading this chapter since this is
something new I am trying in my classroom.
When I taught kindergarten years ago in a different district, we didn't
start guided reading until the second semester but as times are changing, we
need to start earlier and earlier to meet the demands of our students needs to
prepare them for kindergarten. After
reading the section about being cautious about how we group our children, I
have really started thinking if I could do it a different way with my
students. I have my students ability
grouped at the moment but this chapter has me thinking if I could mix my
students from time to time. I want my
students to be able partner read and learn from each other. This chapter also has me thinking about my
book collection for quality. While the
Bob books are perfect for beginning readers with easy predictable stories, they
do not provide great text for really getting into comprehension skills. These books are perfect for my early readers
to be careful to look for beginning and ending sounds and use picture clues to
figure out unknown words. They are also
perfect for working on word families.
They do have a lack of detail in the story to focus on a deeper level of
comprehension. This chapter also has me
thinking if I should try and break the time and meet with both groups and do a
shorter guided reading lesson. I believe
my lower group could benefit from targeting concepts about print skills during
our guided reading time.
We are very fortunate to have assistance in the early
grades to help with our classroom management so that we have the opportunity to
work with our students in small groups.
Even when guided reading is not in the form of a small group, we have a
variety of books available in every center so that children have the
opportunity to explore during play. Our
students are given opportunities to make choices in book baskets during various
times throughout the day. We spend a
great deal of time teaching our students how to conduct a picture walk and
stress that they are readers even if they are not able to read the text. I agree that it is so important for us to
model to our students our expectations.
Wow, Meredith, you have a lot of great thoughts here! You are SO right that our youngest readers need books they can decode independently, but they also need higher-quality literature that allows for deeper comprehension skills (I find that books either target decoding or comprehension, not both, with our youngest readers). So how do we focus on the important work of comprehension? And if a child doesn't know their letters/sounds/sight words, can't they still participate in comprehension work if a book is read aloud to them? How can we make sure that our lower readers also have a chance to engage in comprehension work?
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