Guided Reading Assignment

1. guided reading: I think that guided reading is a form of instruction where a teacher and a group of students read a story after a short lesson with the teacher about tricky words or concepts, with the help of each other.

•  a. elements necessary for guided reading lessons: 
• before reading: an introduction done by the teacher before reading takes place. this introduction can be done by a conversation with the students about the book. This is where students can make predictions about what the book is about, and teachers can go over some important/frequent words or concepts the students will encounter while reading this book. 
• during reading: then the students will read the book softly to themselves, this is where the teacher may listen in on how the student is reading and assist/support them as the read.
• after reading: the students and teacher discuss the meaning of the text and revisit parts as needed. This is also where a teacher can teach explicit lessons/points that he/she observed while watching students read.

2. guided reading graphic organizer:

Guided Reading   Before Reading	During Reading	After Reading
·       The students went through and looked at the pictures with their teacher, and talked about each one. Like how flowers related to the weather because rain makes them grow. ·       The teacher prompts the students about what their prediction for this book is and they all say “its about kinds of weather’ ·       They put their finger on the title of the book and as she reads each word of the title the students put their finger on each word with her. They attempt to say the words the first time, but she reinforces their confidence and the second time around they all say the title word by word together. ·       Their teacher is very enthusiastic about reading, which I believe is making her students more engaged and eager to read.	·       On the first page they are talking about stormy weather. She tells the students how she feels about stormy weather and asks them what they think about it. She also makes them comfortable with giving their own opinion, like Danielle likes stormy weather and she is still just as enthusiastic with her. She tells the students how that type of weather makes her feel – showing them how to connect text to themselves. ·       She prompts the students by asking them what certain pictures are. She does not give them the answer, but she will point and ask them what they think that picture represents. ·       When they are ready to move to the next page she keeps everyone together by announcing that they are moving on. ·       She uses professional words like ‘text’ instead of book. ·       She reminds them to think about the text as they are reading ·       She has them put their finger under important/frequent words and asks them how to sound out that word. Ex.: cloud: how the C in cloud makes a K sound. ·       She talks about the words they may not know yet, like weather, and asks them what the beginning sound says, then she asks them to find that word by looking for the W word on the page. Leaving it up to them to find it! ·       She lets them turn back to pages to reference what they learned previously to help them. During Reading: ·       She is teaching them to look for clues in the photographs. ·       When they are talking about snowy weather she, again, is making a connection from the text to her students lives by talking about the weather that they actually have. ·       The children are pointing out words they know on the pages like weather, snow; and sight words like is and the. ·       The teacher points out that they know every word on every page ·       She continues to point out skills, like referring the pictures and words to understand or comprehend the story, as they are reading. Also looking at how punctuations work.  ·       She works one on one with a student who seems to be struggling with reading, but when she is working with him he looks like he is enjoying her aid. ·       The students are using their fingers to point out words as the read them.	·       While she is going around to every student as they are independently read – she has them reread the book as many times as they can until she finishes with every student. ·       She tells them that the sounds at the beginning of the word go with what you are saying and the sounds at the end of the word go with what we are saying, like winT and wind. ·       She went back through the book and showed the whole group words they had problems with like pronouncing what as wat. ·       She is trying to enforce that if what they are reading is not making sense to go back and sound out the words and reread! ·       She used a word work exercise at the end. They went through pictures and asked her students to say what each picture represented ·       Then an exercise matching beginning letters with the pictures from the previous exercise. Then the same with the last letters of the words

3. Video Response:

• I though that this lesson was a great example of guided reading. I like that we got to do this activity because it taught me a lot about how to actually instruct a guided reading lesson. I was also a bit confused about what guided reading was so this helped out a lot! She was very engaged and entertaining to watch, and I think that translated to her students enthusiasm about reading. She was able to keep my attention for the whole video, and she was very fun to watch. She gave students the opportunity to find out things for themselves and did not just show or tell them everything about the book. She was also very good at using everyones thoughts and answers to teach different points. There was not anything that stuck out at me that I would change. I thought this teacher did a wonderful job helping and instructing the students using guided reading. 

4. Reading A-Z Website

• I think this website would be very helpful for doing guided reading exercises in the classroom. It is obviously a site for teachers who want to teach reading, and offers many free printout instruction pieces. I typed in guided reading in the search bar and tons of materials came up. I like how many options it gave for multiple searches. The search for guided reading gave a lot of options that were benchmark assessment passages that students can read after having done proper guided reading pre-reading activities like talking about the passage and going over difficult words. I think I would use this website for materials in my own classroom by finding level appropriate materials from the site and by using the Raz-Kids managing system. Obviously I am completely sure this student manager would work, and I do not want to spend days and days on assessments, but I like the idea of the student manager.