Truly Guided Reading

Guided Reading is the classroom Reading Recovery with supplements. In the classroom every child is involved in focussed reading instruction, small groups necessitate exceptional organization, all this without the year-long training that Reading Recovery participants have. Over the years teachers have been directed towards Guided Reading without knowledge of how to organize the class while working with small groups and further, without the knowledge of what is involved in overt reading instruction.

This book will change that and give teachers the resources to organize and put in place worthwhile and relevant activities for children to independently engage in. In this book, significant suggestions are forwarded to make Guided Reading easier to implement and more effective.

This book challenges held views about Guided Reading - misconceptions and misapplications of Guided Reading will be highlighted and in place will be effective pedagogy to help children move towards being truly confident, thinking readers.

The teaching practices emphasized are:

* Managing differentiated reading instruction for early, developing, early fluent readers, including a chapter relating to older readers.

* Class management while working with small groups - independent tasks.

* Questioning and prompting so children acquire and use self-help reading and comprehension strategies.

* Encouraging student talk where they explore and exchange ideas.

* Assessment (and recording) that informs instruction.

The Author:

Long term experiences, including implementation (a Reading Recovery teacher for 9 years and a Guided Reading practitioner in her own classroom), observations (a consultant working with teachers in South Australia, Britain and U.S.A.) and extensive study, has given Liz Simon a comprehensive view of effective Guided Reading practices. Pedagogy, ‘the how to put in practice’, is Liz’s great interest and this is seen in other books published by this author: Thinkers and Performers: Bringing Critical Thinking Alive (Hawker Brownlow Education), Strategic Spelling: Every Writer’s Tool and Write as an Expert: Explicit Teaching of Genres (Heinemann 2004, 2005), Literacy Activities for Small Groups (Eleanor Curtain Publishing).