A great session based around Guided Reading, that shows there is still a place for this in the reading programme, along with the 'new' Structured Literacy.
Seeing the steps for introducing a text has reminded me that this part of reading is important, but sometimes gets robbed, as time is short and there is a tendency to 'rush' into the reading because that is what they need to be doing. If this is done well then reading the text should be easier, and the activities that children do after will better reflect their knowledge and ideas.
I found the tools available for observing readers useful, especially the Listening to Reading and the Fluency Rubric. Fluency has always been a major part of children's reading - without it, simply saying a word then another word then another, does nothing for their understanding of the text.
As always, organising and planning the follow-up activities is important. I once had a student who said to me, "I hate reading because we have to do so much writing." It has stuck with me and sometimes in my reading programmes in the past there were no follow-up activities after reading the text and discussing all the parts such as comprehension, inferring, points of view etc. Now we are lucky in that follow-up activities can take a multitude of forms. And being on the RPI we have been shown so many examples from other teachers willing to share what they do. Thanks to all of you.
Kia ora Wayne,
ReplyDeleteAnother interesting reflection to read, thanks! I like your thinking around the importance of pre planning your guided reading sessions and making sure we are really intentional about what our learners can have done beforehand to be ready for what we want to teach, what we can during the session to make the best use of our time, and then how learners can consolidate this learning afterwards in a way that is meaningful and engaging to them.
I'm also interested to see how you make use of the fluency rubric and the LTR tool - such great enablers of understanding our learners better, but they need explicit teaching and embedding time, too. Tricky to balance it all!
Have a great few weeks,
Georgie