The article I read this week is: Guided Reading: A Reasearch-Based Response to the Challenges of Early Reading Instruction By: Anita Iaquinta
Guided reading first starts with good teaching. I believe that this is so important in teaching students the appropriate skills necessary to become successful readers. This includes being able to properly group students together. Sometimes as teachers, we group students into their ability level groups, and these do not change throughout the year. In dynamic grouping, it is necessary to change these groups up, and for the students to expect them to change throughout the year. As students progress to a different level of reading, they need to change groups where they can be challenged in new areas. I never realized how important it was to divide up these reading groups, to observe, monitor, and then rearrange them according to each students needs.
The article points out that HOW you teach is just as important as WHAT you teach, knowing when to intervene, and when not to intervene. We want our students to succeed, so we find ourselves correcting them many times when it is not necessary. I realize sometimes I am too hard on the students when they are reading, because I want to them to get everything right. But that is when it is important to choose which strategies you want to focus on with each child, so they do not feel overwhelmed. Once they have accomplished that skills, you can move on to a new one.
1. What if a child is really struggling with a skill, do you move on to a new one and hope that it will come, or do you stay on that skill until it is mastered?
2. Is it too much to teach 2-3 skills at once while a child is reading a passage?
Week One Blog Post
11 years ago
Something I have never really considered before reading your blog is how the groups need to constantly be changing, because the students' skill levels are constantly changing too! I think that is something also that the kids would enjoy, because they would always be adding or subtracting members from their groups. I am not really sure how to answer your first question, it is one that I have often wondered about myself, but for the second question, no I do not think 2-3 skills is too many, because as readers you need to focus on more than one thing--so I think learning multiple skills at once is a good idea, especially for advanced students.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your second question- I think that whether or not you realize it, you will be teaching many skills while working on a primary target area. The students will gain practice with everything associated with reading (i.e.: fluency, comprehension, etc.) simply by working on one targeted exercise. It might even be helpful for older students to identify which skills they are working on while doing any given activity.
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