Too Good for Guided Reading?
From the desk of Alice…
I recently had a conversation with a teacher who said her kids don’t really need Guided Reading anymore because they are her top students and they can read well. If you are in a school working on Guided Reading, you may have heard this, too. In a perfect school world, we would have all students immersed in a workshop format for reading and writing. This is a tall order so if you don’t have a full workshop in place, consider Guided Reading as the next best thing as part of a complete balanced literacy approach. When thinking about the students that “need” Guided Reading, consider these 3 things:
1. Guided Reading is a term that we use at ERG that really refers to a structure for small group instruction that allows for differentiation. ERG follows the Fountas and Pinnell model for Guided Reading, but we want teachers to be able to modify the text selection and purposes to meet the needs of readers at any point in their reading development. That being said, our structure for “Guided Reading” can support ALL kinds of readers even the top 5% in a school that has high proficiency. Call it small group instruction time, call it differentiation, call it responsive teaching. Call it whatever you want, just make some time for it.
2. Once you keep it in your schedule, remind yourself that even the best and brightest students have room to grow. My own child is an example of this. She scores well on tests (formal and informal) and she reads in her free time for enjoyment and she is a good student across a variety of content areas. I am sure you know a student like this. However, she still has things to learn. For example, her genre of choice is science fiction and historical fiction. When faced with analyzing poetry for theme or even considering an author’s word choice, she has some room to grow. She particularly had room to grow when she was still in elementary school! If we have students in our classrooms who are experts in certain genres and kinds of reading, then go with something different in the “Guided Reading” lesson. How well are they interpreting charts, reading historical documents, able to infer theme, or analyzing the structure of the piece? These are the things our best readers still need practice doing despite their ability to already read. With the support of the teacher, these are perfect things to work on during the “Guided Reading” group.
3. Look at the standards. Whether your state has adopted Common Core Standards or not, in any given classroom you have standards that students may have a hard time achieving. In some cases, this cuts across all levels of readers and writers. So utilize your “Guided Reading” time to group by standard, NOT by reading level. You will need to be strategic about text selection….it will have to be an instructional text that works for everyone in the group. However, with texts like poetry or even charts and graphs, the words on the page can be simple while the thinking will be complex. This type of text can work well for a small group working on THINKING with the support of their teacher. This will also help you group flexibly and not fall into stagnant groups of Red Birds, Blue Birds, and Buzzards!
I hope this helps broaden your definition of “Guided Reading” and realize that the top students may appear to be good readers, but hopefully they are not DONE learning! Consider “Guided Reading” as another tool to support the learning of all your readers-not just the readers that are struggling!