“The aim of guided reading is to develop independent readers who question, consider alternatives, and make informed choices as they seek meaning.”

– Margaret Mooney

Reading instruction should be a part of the school day in primary classrooms. As they move from grade to grade, children need explicit teaching that helps them begin to read more challenging texts fluently and with deep understanding.

Any class will have children with varying reading abilities and skills. Some children might be very good at word-solving and decoding. They may understand that they are reading with a purpose, and make meaning of the texts they read. Other children could be good at basic decoding, but not at meaning-making. Some others might struggle with even this. It’s only natural that the teacher is left wondering how to support children in a classroom with varied learning levels and needs.

This piece hopes to aid the understanding of what guided reading is, its purposes, and how a teacher could practice this in class. I will also share my experience with a variation of the recommended model of guidance where modelling and the need for gradual release of responsibility was an integral part of engagement in the classroom. My intent is to highlight the need for a more systematic approach to guiding children with their reading.

Guided Reading

According to Fountas and Pinnell, “The purpose of guided reading is to meet the varying instructional needs of all the students in your class, enabling them to greatly expand their reading powers. During guided reading, they read a book you have specifically selected to provide a moderate amount of challenge^[1] and you support them in tackling the necessary problem solving to overcome the difficulties they may encounter.” (pp. 191).

We must note the keywords “moderate challenge”. The idea is to select a text that is just right for the developmental ability of the group, so each student feels in control.

Most importantly, guided reading is small group instruction for students who read the same text from their own copies. Small groups allow for interaction among readers, which helps them all. The group is homogenous--the students read at about the same level, show similar reading behaviours and share similar instructional needs. These groups change as and when the children are assessed for growth and needs (Fountas and Pinnell, 2001).

Basic Structure of Guided Reading

• Selecting the text
• Introducing the text
• Reading the text
• Discussing and revisiting the text
• Teaching processing strategies
• Extending the meaning of the text (optional)
• Word work (optional)

Selecting the Text

The teacher selects a text based on the reading level, considering the strengths, needs and interests of the students.

Introducing the Text

The introduction works as a guide to the reader. The teacher talks about the title and gives a summary of the story. He/she helps the children connect the text to their lives and gives them prompts to think about information that could be sought from the text, and the author’s style. The teacher also takes them through a picture walk, encourages their interest in the text, introduces a few new words that they would encounter and so on. So the students spend less time trying to understand a text that is new to them.

Reading the Text

While very young children from Grades Kindergarten to Grade 2 use whisper voices as they read, students from Grades 3 to 5 read silently. This activity helps develop independent readers--it is different from shared reading (the teacher and the students read a text in chorus) or from ‘round robin reading’ (students take turns to read sections of the text). The teacher here goes from child to child and has them read aloud to sample their reading. Depending on the needs of the individual child or the group, the teacher could initiate discussions. The teacher also makes observations about each student, which would inform steps for future support.

Discussing and Revisiting the Text

The idea is to discuss the text in a way that helps students summarise, synthesise and communicate how they relate to the text, make connections with their own lives, and make inferences and hypothesis. Discussion helps them take cues from what others have to say about the text to support their own understanding and extend it. It develops in them the ability to look at a text critically. Revisiting the text supports vocabulary development, among other important skills. This should not be reduced to an interrogative session or quiz.

Teaching for Processing Strategies

This helps the teacher to keep a close record of how the students problem-solve and improve this ability through reinforcement. The purpose of this teaching is not to enable students to read the particular text but to develop strategies they can apply to all reading (pp. 212). For example, you may notice that one group of children need to work better on their word-solving strategies. You pause where the text offers an opportunity and help them do this. Then you ask them to go back to the text and find similar examples. Here, you not only support their need, but also show them that they have to apply this learning to the rest of the text, and other texts in future.

Extending the Meaning of the Text (optional)

Though important, this is an optional component. You could help the children identify aspects such as genre, author style, how different authors treat the same topic, different books by the same author in fiction and non-fiction texts. When we help students to extend the meaning of a text, we are helping them think about a text in different ways and understand that connecting the text to their lives is a key aspect of meaning-making.

Word Work (optional)

This is a short one- or two-minute component which involves teaching word-solving. The words taken could be independent of the text they have just read.

The detailed structure given above may seem a bit of a challenge, more so when it is to be done with one small group within a larger classroom. What, then, should you do about the other students while you work with this group?

Fountas and Pinnell suggest that other students could read texts of their choice or those given by the teacher. They could be writing in their reader’s notebook, or completing other tasks that the teacher has assigned them. While this may appear to be a challenge in many Indian classrooms, it can be achieved with careful planning, classroom management and by setting mutual expectations in the classroom.

Guided Reading in My Third Grade Classroom

This brings me to my experience as a novice teacher, straight out of university, with ideas and strategies for a language classroom brewing in my head. I was raring to go.

I taught in an alternative school in Bangalore, so I had lot of flexibility in planning and conducting lessons. But I was rather unprepared to deal with the diversity of learning levels in my classroom, and needed to invent my very own model of guidance and support as I went along.

In my Grade 3 classroom, a few children were voracious readers, would frequently borrow books from the library, and present book reviews and book talks with confidence and ease. Give them any text, and they would not only make meaning, they would be open to discussing it and sharing their inferences. Some other children would borrow books and read them, but not talk about what they had read much. Another bunch found it difficult to read a simple text they were presented with, and for fear of being judged, they would refuse to share their experience of the text (if they were able to make sense of it). A couple of children in my class were labelled struggling readers, with a need for special, focussed support from the teacher (me) and a special educator.

The first two or three months were the most challenging. I could not be sure what each child’s reading and writing needs were. As a new teacher working make my children skilful, confident readers, it was important that I did not allow myself to be discouraged or rattled no matter what. I had to support my children, and their individual needs were my priority.

Read-alouds were an integral part of our language-learning experience. I also tried shared reading, but I noticed it was not the most effective way for third graders to become independent and fluent readers. Given the varied range of skills and needs among the children, I found myself adapting a method that was not strictly Fountas and Pinnell’s guided reading, described in the previous section.

It took me three or four months to be able to grasp where each of my students were. I was not in a position to divide the class into small groups of different reading levels as suggested by Fountas and Pinnell. The organisation and management of such a class was not something I was ready to take on yet! Instead, I made small groups, with two to four children to a group. Each had one ‘good’ reader who could model reading for the rest of the group, one intermediate reader (optional) and one reader who needed extra support. They were called ‘reading buddies’.

Initially, I chose comprehension passages which were short and easy to complete in two 40-minute sessions. The passages had comprehension questions. The children could either write down answers to these in the space below the questions or they could to mark or point from the answers in text when we discussed them as a group. I chose no more than two texts for the class, so multiple groups could read from the same text at the same time. I would briefly introduce the passage to each group, tell them what it was about, and ask them some questions related to the topic. The passages covered a range of topics, such as, wildlife, sports, family and relationships. Sometimes, I chose topics that some children showed a special interest in, like science or technology. I also incorporated texts from other lessons that we explored in the content areas.

The children first read the text silently. Mostly, I encouraged struggling readers to try to make meaning on their own, and to keep at it even if it seemed hard. I must confess, I was lucky, they took learning and the struggle that it comes with in their stride and felt motivated to learn from their peers and the occasional support I offered. Then each child read the text out loud, yet soft enough that only their group could hear. If they struggled with a word, their more able peers pitched in to support them. This way, they read the passages at least three times, taking turns.

They then discussed the text among themselves, tried collectively to find answers to the questions and marked them in the text. Then, if required, I helped them with structure for writing. So they completed the exercise as a group and turned in their worksheets. We then went over the text as a larger group and discussed it one final time. Now I focussed on aspects that I wanted them to pay special attention to–genre, writing style, the children’s experience if any.

I  noticed a steady improvement in their reading, and this helped boost their motivation levels. We had a sense of responsibility and discipline by the end of the academic year.

As I look back, I cringe a little at the workable solution I found. Its strength was the grouping of children with differing abilities together, with more capable peers helping less capable ones. Each child received guidance and support in decoding and comprehending each passage–either from a peer or from me. A weakness of this approach was that readers were not closely matched with the texts they read. I realise now that matching the texts and readers better might have helped more.

Teachers and those who observe teaching know how reading in most Indian classrooms is reduced to mere drill and practice, with the students repeating what the teacher reads till they learn every sentence in the book by heart. We have seen children focussing on just that section of the text that they would have to read when their turn comes, and they lose out on  the joy of reading a text as a whole.

Criticising teachers is an easy way to pass the buck. Guiding children’s reading in meaningful ways is a primary challenge in the elementary classroom. And finding workable ways to address this need would go a long way towards helping teachers and their students.

References –

Fountas, I. C., & Pinnell, G. S. (2001). Guiding readers and writers, grades 3-6: Teaching comprehension, genre, and content literacy. Portsmouth, N.H: Heinemann.

^[1] Here, by ‘challenge’ they mean the text is ‘manageable’, that the children can read with at least 90%-94% accuracy and 90% comprehension.