Organization: Part 4: Teaching Strategies

How Do I Organize Myself to Teach Reading and Writing?

Component #1: Guided Reading
What is Guided Reading?
• Instruction to small groups of students with similar reading processes and levels of text.
• The teacher introduces stories and assists children’s reading to help them develop independent reading strategies.
• Each child reads the whole text, independently and silently (whisper read).
• The emphasis is on reading increasingly challenging books over time.
• Children are grouped and regrouped in a dynamic process involving ongoing assessment and observation. (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996)

Goals of Guided Reading
• Teach comprehension skills and strategies. The National Reading Panel’s report Put Reading First (2002) suggests teaching the following strategies during guided reading:
••Monitoring comprehension,
•• Using graphic and semantic organizers,
•• Answering questions,
•• Generating questions,
•• Recognizing story structure,
•• Summarizing,
•• Using prior knowledge, and
•• Using mental imagery.
• Develop background knowledge, meaning vocabulary, and oral language.
• Teach children how to read different types of literature.
• Provide instructional level reading materials.
• Maintain the motivation and self-confidence of struggling readers. (Cunningham, Hall, & Cunningham, 2000)

A Video Example of a Guided Reading Lesson Introducing a Book

	Watch a VIDEO CLIP (click here)
	Description: Angi, a kindergarten teacher, works with a small guided reading group. They are just starting a new book and sound out the word “around” in the title.

The guided reading lesson format is a 30-40 minute block containing:
• Before Reading (5-10 minutes)
•• Build prior knowledge
•• Make connections
•• Picture walk
•• Make predictions
•• Set purpose for reading
•• Develop vocabulary
• During Reading (15-20 minutes)
•• Choral, echo, shared and partner reading
•• Small, flexible groups
•• Three ring circus format (alone, with partners, or with teacher)
•• Book club groups
•• Everyone read to (ERT)
•• Sticky note reading
• After Reading (5-10 minutes)
•• Discussing text/literature
•• Connecting new knowledge to what they knew before
•• Following up predictions
•• Acting out the story
•• Discussing what they have learned and how they are becoming better readers by using reading strategies
•• Completing graphic organizers or KWL chart (Cunningham, Hall, & Sigmon, 1999)

Selecting the Texts for Guided Reading
• Students should be able to read the text with 90% accuracy.
• The text should be interesting to the reader.
• It should match their knowledge base.
• It should help children make the next step in learning to read, i.e. move forward in their literacy development.
• The text should offer enough challenge to support problem solving while supporting fluency and meaning. (Pinnell, 2002)

Books for guided reading are categorized by levels. This allows them to be organized so teachers’ decisions can be easier, faster, and more effective. Factors considered in leveling books include:
• Book and print features
• Genre
• Content, Themes, and Ideas
• Language and literacy features
• Vocabulary and words
• Sentence complexity
• Punctuation
Leveled books are not available for children to select until they appear in browsing boxes after being read in guided reading groups. (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996).

Sources of Leveled Text or Lists of Leveled Books
1. Reading A-Z is aligned with research findings. It provides educators with a large collection of developmentally appropriate reading books spread over 27 levels of difficulty. The books have been written to strict leveling criteria and then further analyzed using software that rates each book using more than 20 factors of difficulty. See www.readinga-z.com.
2. Scholastic Guided Reading Program (Blue and Red Edition)
3. Rigby/ Harcourt
4. Pinnell & Fountas (1999) Matching Books to Readers: A Leveled Book List for Guided Reading, K-3
5. You can also determine the reading level of a book by typing a sample of its text into Microsoft Word. Then, go to Tools and scroll down to Spelling and Grammar. At the end of a spell check, a window pops up and tells the Flesch-Kincaid readability grade level.

Views on Guided Reading
“The guided reading lesson format provides a rich opportunity for teachers to observe and investigate early literacy. Listening to a student read a text that is only partially familiar allows us to apply and refine our theories of literacy learning and instruction (Schwartz, 2005).

“Guided reading stands alongside read aloud, shared reading, independent reading, word study groups, and writing as one means of helping children acquire the strategies and skills they need to become fluent readers (Taberski, 2000, p. 96).

Watch a VIDEO CLIP (click here)

Description: Angi works with her kindergarten children using the big book The Little Mouse, the Red Ripe Strawberry, and the Big Hungry Bear. While this is not an example of small group guided reading instruction, it does show group skills development. In this part of the lesson, Angi focuses upon the literary elements of character and setting. The children discuss whether the narrator is actually the bear or a third person who is using the possibility of the bear to get the mouse to share the strawberry. This discussion could just as easily have taken place in a small guided reading group.

Component #2: Self-Selected Reading or Reading Workshop
The purpose of the self-selected reading block is to build fluency in reading, allow students choice in reading, and build confidence in students as readers. Direct Instruction is not part of the lesson plan for this block. Teaching in this block occurs indirectly. Many teachers consider this to be the same as Reading Workshop.

Three Segments of Self-Selected Reading
1. Teacher Read Aloud (5-10 min.)
2. Independent Reading and conferencing (15-20 min.)
3. Sharing (5-10 min.)

Component #3: Working with Words
The focus in the Working with Words block is reading, spelling and using high-frequency words correctly. In the younger grades, this begins with phonemic awareness and phonics activities. To focus instruction, teachers must assess, monitor, and plan for the needs of their students.

Working with Words Strategies
• Making words
• Word walls
• Guess the covered word

For details on the Four Blocks Model, go to Pat Cunningham’s website http://www.wfu.edu/academics/fourblocks/index.html. Also see http://www.four-blocks.com/, which is the Carson-Dellosa Publishers site. They publish Four Blocks support books in grade level bands.

Component #4: Writing Workshop
Writing workshop always begins with the teacher modeling writing. Use the curriculum standards to determine appropriate mini-lessons for writing at your grade level. As an example, if you are to teach similes, share some common ones with your class. Next, ask the children to share some. Then they can ask the children to work in small groups to write some more. These can be shared with the whole group. Finally, the children will write independently and incorporate similes in their stories. Peers edit the stories during Author’s Chair or each child may have a editing conference with the teacher. Finally, the edited stories are displayed or read aloud to the class.

Interactive Writing
The pen is in the hand of the child in interactive writing. This would be considered shared or guided writing on the literacy backbone. The difference between shared writing and guided writing is the level of support of the teacher. Guided writing, like guided reading, is likely to be taught in small groups. Typically, interactive writing is done on a chart tablet. The children negotiate the topic and the sentence to be written. Different children contribute to the writing. If a child makes a mistake, correction paper is stuck over the mistake and the child is allowed to try again. An example of this is classroom rules developed and written out by the children. The results of interactive writing are displayed in the classroom so that children can read them whenever they want. Interactive writing allows children to use their phonics and word knowledge to figure out how to write words and sentences.

Interactive writing is a whole-class activity. While the child is writing, the rest of the class may be practicing the sound on individual white boards or doing a mini-lesson with the teacher. Magna-Boards or white boards work well for the mini-lessons. Interactive writing is an essential component of kindergarten, first, and second grade classrooms when children need lots of support to learn reading and writing skills.

Sample Schedule for a Balanced Literacy Program
9:00-9:15 Reading Aloud
9:15-9:45 Working with Words
9:45-10:30 Reading Workshop/Guided Reading
--conferences/guided reading
--self-selected reading/writing (centers)
--reading sharing
10:30-11:30 Writing Workshop
--spelling and handwriting
--interactive writing
--writing conferences
--independent writing
--writing sharing

What do I do with the rest of the class when I am working with small groups in guided reading?
It is always a challenge to keep all children gainfully occupied so that you can do your guided reading groups. One solution is to have centers to which the children go when they are not in a guided reading group. Another solution is to have the children who are not in guided reading doing self-selected reading. A third solution would be to combine these and have some children at centers, some in guided reading, and some doing self-selected reading or even working on their writing. In the example schedule above, self-selected reading (reading workshop) is combined with guided reading.