Conducting Guided Reading

Guided Reading continued from the previous post.

Instructions for Conducting Guided Reading to Improve Reading Skills:

1. Conduct guided reading with the student a minimum of 20 minutes/day (more is better!).
2. The student must read out loud to you.
3. The parent/teacher/another proficient reader must be looking at the printed text and providing immediate feedback. This careful monitoring is particularly important in the learning and remedial stages. You MUST be looking at exactly what the student is reading so you can make immediate corrections. This careful monitoring of each and every word is necessary until the student has become skilled at accurate decoding. (The rule of thumb is when the student makes no more than 1 or 2 errors per page). Either sit directly next to the student where you can both see the print OR make a copy of the material so you can follow along. Having a separate copy is sometimes preferred if you are tutoring other students or if the student does not appreciate someone ‘reading over their shoulder’.
4. Require the student to read carefully. Teach the student to look carefully at the words instead of rushing through with ‘fast & careless’ reading. Stopping the student at every mistake is highly effective in slowing down the ‘fast & careless’ reading. Usually, the impatient students who like to ‘rush’ do not like to be stopped. Therefore, when you stop them at every mistake they begin to read more carefully. Like anything else, careful reading is a habit. Help the student develop good habits.

Require complete accuracy in all reading.

1. Stop the student all errors, no matter how ‘minor’ they may appear. This includes skipped words as well as any mistake on accurately reading a word. Stopping the errors is critical for effective remediation as you must extinguish incorrect processing as well as develop proficient reader skills. With the correction of errors, often all you need to do is tap the missed word with a pencil. This signals the student to ‘look again’.

If the student skips a word, tap the word they missed and have the student reread it.

If the student reads a word inaccurately (says the wrong word or misses a detail of word) have him reread the word correctly. Point to the specific sound/error if necessary.

2. Do not let any errors slip by, no matter how ‘small’. Make sure the student is paying close attention to all details.

If the student uses the wrong choice/alternate sound, tell them something similar to “Good try, however this word uses the __ sound” ( For example if the word was ‘bestow’ and the student uses the /ow/ sound for ‘ow’ instead of the correct /oa/ sound). Have the student re-read the word applying the correct sound.

3. The student needs to correct their mistake. Frequently the student has the skill to accurately read the word but either they were not paying attention or slipped back into a previous incorrect strategy (such as word guessing or visual ‘whole word’ processing). Often by ‘looking again’ the student uses the correct process and is able to accurately read the word.
4. If the student is lacking a skill then you need to teach them that skill so they are able to accurately read the word. Examples: Correct sound of words
5. Help the student with multi-syllable words when necessary. Use a pencil to make light slash marks at the syllable breaks. If certain words are difficult, you can write these down for later practice in isolation.
6. Require physical tracking (with finger, pencil or other pointers) when reading UNTIL the student no longer makes tracking errors. The tracking also helps focus the student on the details of the word and improves attention to detail.
7. Develop vocabulary as the student reads. When appropriate, stop the student in new words. If they do not understand the word, explain what the word means. Then have the student reread the sentence so they will understand it.

Work on developing specific comprehension skills. This often involves questions and discussing the material as they read along. The depth of comprehension skills increases as the student becomes older and their skills advance.

Monitor the student’s progress and modify the instruction to what the student needs. When the students decoding skills improve/advance to the point where he makes very few errors/page, the careful attention to accurate decoding is no longer necessary and the guided reading can shift primarily to the higher-level skills.  At this point, you no longer have to monitor each and every word. Instead, you primarily focus on vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. This level of guided reading where you shift from the ‘technical skills’ of decoding to the content of what you are reading is extremely enjoyable.

CREDIT: Right Track Reading