Guided reading

[DizzyDalek]

My ds is in year 1 and has had guided reading twice since the beginning of term. It doesn't seem a lot to me,just wondering how often other schools do it?

Perhaps it shouldn't be called Guided Reading any more, if it's a throwback to Literacy Hour?

Our ' guided reading' groups are children from both Year 2 classes, so that there are about 8 groups on a rotational programme of pre-read, teacher asking questions, follow-up work sheet, and e-books on the Bug Club on Active Learn. Plus there are two TA led 'intervention' groups where we do reading and comprehension every day, to get their skills up to scratch. My group seem to enjoy it. We have quite animated discussions about what words mean, or thinking of other words to use.They're quite competitive !

Timothy Shanahan wrote that the main problem with guided reading is that there are too many levels often overlapping and fewer larger groups would be much more effective use of teaching and learning time. He also contends that the system used to level texts is dubious at best.

Looking at vocabulary, punctuation eg an ellipse, inference, a good word to start a paragraph with. I do a read together, then read individually, then read together format. I look at books boys would enjoy and stories with a moral as they like to resolve these stories and they lead to a lot of discussion. The language is often different too. I think Guided Reading can be quite exciting but you need to look for those books that grip the reader.