What does 'guided reading' mean?

[Meita]

Stupid question perhaps but I just can't work it out. DS not at school yet but I'm trying to get a grip on how school works, as I grew up in a totally different school system. Different language too, so learning to read was very different than what it seems to be like here.

Also, I gather that a child is ready to move to a higher reading level when they can read 90% of the words in a book without having to sound them out. (is that right?). Does this refer to their first attempt at reading a book, or to a book that they have read at school already then brought home, or maybe a book they have had home for half a week/a whole week, and read daily and now it is the night before they bring it back.

Would appreciate any pointers!

guided reading and group reading seem to mean different things in different schools so can't help with that.

with regards to the 90-95% accuracy rate, not necessarily very relevant now that they are taught with phonics so should be able to decode the words but I think it can still give a guide to their fluency and ease of reading. It should apply to the first time they come across the book IMO.

Guided reading is a session in small differentiated groups with a teacher. The book is discussed in details e.g. inferring, predicting, understanding of vocab, how the author uses language etc.

Younger children won't always get moved onto a harder book if their comprehension skills aren't as strong as their reading skills.

(I am a primary teacher btw).

Thanks both! So guided reading is not at all the same as 'reading to someone' / 'being heard reading' by say a teacher, TA, parent helper, older child. Or does it count as that as well, but guided reading is more than that?

Yes, during guided reading the teacher will listen to the children read individually, but they will also do lots of discussion.

In my dc's school guided reading is a separate lesson in itself and involves reading and discussing the story and the way it is written- a kind of book club for punctuation pedants. The book is often at a different level to one which they might read normally - much to dd2's utter disgust when being given a pink book in guided reading in yr 2. I imagine that the teacher was using it to discuss a point. Parents are never involved with guided reading in my dc's school.

At some point during reception your child will start to bring home reading books. Some children will love them, my girls hated reading. Ds happily seems to love it. I find that a child is probably ready to go up a level when they can read a book in 10 mins without sounding out many words. (slightly quicker for the first levels and a bit longer for the higher levels). You then put increasingly blatant notes in their reading record until the magic day when a teacher has heard them read and has said that they can go up a level. This is sometimes just a week or two after the last change in book band, or it can be long torturous months (think our record was over 6 months), it is not always a steady progression. A child who can decode easily may take longer to be able to understand the story so might not go up even if they can read it quickly, ds is beginning to reach the limits of his comprehension, I didn't have this with my daughters as they took so long to be able to decode words that the storylines were too easy for them.

Eventually by about the end of yr2 virtually everyone ends up able to read to a reasonable standard. Parents of children who really struggled find that their children are now reading the same books as their peers who zoomed ahead early.