Guided Reading

I have always been curious about guided reading, and how exactly it works in the classroom.  The article I chose is called "Guided reading: Who is in the driver's seat?"  by Susan Kidd Villaume and Edna Greene Brabham.  This title really stuck out to me, and made me curious to know the current trends on guided reading.

The article opened with numerous questions that teachers at every grade leve ask.  "Should basals, children's literature, or decodable texts be used?  Should grouping be homogeneous or hetergoeneous?  Should instruction be systematic o responsive?  Should students reawd orrally or silently?" (Villaume/Brabham 260).  The article explains that the answer to all of these questions is "Yes!"  The main idea of the article is that teachers are starting to lose sight of the purposes of guided reading, by trying to do it "right" all of the time.  There really is no right way to do guided reading.  It is all based on your students various levels and needs.  The article gives many useful techniques and strategies to use in the classroom to ensure that our students are the ones in the driver's seat during guided reading.

One example given was in a second grade classroom.  Before reading a book, the teacher encouraged the children to look through the pictures and discuss their knowledge and ideas related to the text.  For older students, the teacher asked them to flip through the text and talk about what they noticed.  They were able to partake in discussions based on the title, illustrations, names of the chapters, and bold print to make connections.

One second grade example really stuck out to me, because it is something I would never think to do.  First, the teacher began by having the students look at the pictures and describe what they thought the text was about.  The children were quick to talk about what they noticed (two different types of dinosaurs - a plant eater, and a meat eater).  The teacher wanted to dig a little deeper, so she pulled out a Venn diagram.  The students remained in the driver's seat, as they discussed what was similar and different about the two dinosaurs.  To remind students they need to also think about similarities, the teacher simply pointed to the middle of the Venn diagram without saying a word.  The students thought for a moment, and one quickly blurted out a similarity.  I thought this example was really cool, because you can clearly see that along with some scaffolding, the students are in the driver's seat the entire time.  They are doing all of the thinking, questioning, and discussions without any input from the teacher.  "From observations like this, we learned that graphic organizers are powerful conversational scaffolds even when we do not write on them.  We discovered that just pointing (often silently) to different parts of familiar graphic organizers such as Venn diagrams, K-W-L charts, and word maps provides subtle but sufficient prompts to keep students in the driver's seat as they probe what they know about text-related topics" (Villaume/Brabham 261).

The article goes on to talk about different techniques we can use to keep students in the driver's seat during word study, and comprehsnion too.  The article concludes by saying "Because of students' different instructional needs and the complexity of the reading process, we find ourselves exploring the value of all options for guided reading" (Villaume/Brabham 262). 

I found this article to be very interesting.  I have always been curious about guided reading, and how we are "supposed' to do it.  After reading this, I have a new understanding on it, and am reassured that there is no right way to go about it, and the most effective thing you can do during guided reading is to let your students take the wheel and be in the driver's seat.  Along with appropriate assitance and scaffolding, guided reading can be effective any way you go about it.

I encourage everybody to read this article as it is very interesting and informative!!