You may be doing everything right! Over the past 12 years I have observed many teachers lead guided reading groups. I remember when Fountas and Pinnell rolled out their Benchmark Assessment System, and school districts quickly jumped on board for using leveled books – goodbye basal readers! Like watching anything for several years, the guided reading lesson started taking on a new identity. What was originally introduced by Fountas and Pinnell began looking like what we used to do with basal readers (a one-size-fits-all approach). For this blog I wanted to highlight the steps of Fountas and Pinnell’s approach to guided reading and let you decide how close you are to these original steps.
Step 1: Assess a student’s reading skills. This is done by using an informal reading inventory (IRI). Fountas and Pinnel have their own Benchmark Assessment System but truthfully, most any IRI will do. I highly recommend the Flynt/Cooter Comprehensive Reading Inventory 2. This IRI has both Early Literacy Assessments as well as assessments for finding a student’s independent, instructional, frustration, and listening comprehension levels. To me, it is imperative that you use an IRI not only to find a student’s reading levels but also to analyze a student’s miscues. Just listening to a student read and making an educated guess on what his or her reading levels are without the use of an IRI could possibly skew the effectiveness of grouping students to do guided reading.
Step 2: Group students based on determined instructional levels and/or needs. I hate to say this, but this is similar to the high, medium, and low groups used for many years (and I think I can confidently say that these, unfortunately, are still used in classes today). What I mean by similar is that the groups are homogeneous. Students with the same instructional reading levels are put into a group. There could be more than three groups. I observed a 4th grade class with six different groups (one group whose instructional level was 6th grade; two groups whose instructional level was 5th grade; one group whose instructional level was 4th grade; one group whose instructional level was 3rd grade; and one group whose instructional level was 2nd grade). These groups are fluid meaning that students can always move to another group when their instructional level changes.
Step 3: Choose books that are on the instructional level of the students. Fountas and Pinnell do make this easy when using their system since leveled books do come with their program. This could become more difficult and time consuming if you need to find leveled books on your own.
Step 4: Start with a mini-lesson. What skill do your students need? How can this skill be applied to the reading they are going to be doing? How are you going to motivate them to read the text? Is there an essential question that you want answered after the reading?
Step 5: Students read independently. Here is where I have seen the many deviations from what Fountas and Pinnell intended. Each student is going to read the text at the same time but NOT at the same speed. The student will whisper read at his or her own pace. This takes a lot of practice since students are used to doing choral reading – everybody reads the same words at the same time. While the students are whisper reading, you are listening to each one, taking note of skills in which the student may be struggling.
Step 6: Have a discussion with the students. Now that the students have read, you 1) check comprehension, 2) review the skill from the beginning of the lesson, and 3 ) answer the essential question.
These steps are not set in stone, but they have been the most effective ones that I have seen. Only you know your students and what works for them. I hope that you will consider these steps as just a refresher on how guided reading should, or perhaps I should just say COULD, be effectively used in your classroom.