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Hello! Welcome to our classroom blog! As I stated in the newsletter, we have started our guided reading groups this week! I wanted to make a little blog post to help you see what guided reading looks like in our classroom. We use a book called The Next Steps in Guided Reading, by Jan Richardson.

Please ignore the "KTeacherTiff" watermark on the photos. I recycled these photos from an old post on my teaching blog.

There are two separate lesson plan formats I'm going to show you today.The first format is called the "Pre-A lesson," and it is for students who know fewer than 40 letters (includes upper and lowercase). The emergent reading lesson plan is for students who are able to identify at least 40 letters.

The Pre-A Lesson

Part One: Working with Letters and Names (3-4 minutes)

• When the students come to my table, the very first thing they do is get their ABC charts and a baggie that holds all of the letter they know. They match the letters to the chart until time runs out (it goes quick!)

• They may also sort the letters by color, match capital and lowercase letters, name a word that begins with letters in their baggies, or find a target letter on their chart (i.e. "find the letter that you hear at the beginning of car." At the very beginning of the year, we also do name puzzles until the students can write and identify the letters in their names.



• We also spend a minute working on letter formation. They just write their letters down in the empty space on the chart.

Part Two: Working with Sounds (2-3 minutes)

• At the pre-A level, we work on the phonological awareness skills of syllables, rhymes, and beginning sounds. We usually do a quick picture sort as a group.

Part Three: Working With Books (5 minutes)

• The focus is here is oral language, print concepts, and book handling skills. We CHORAL read a simple level A book together. As we read, the students are encouraged to describe what is happening in the pictures. After reading, I ask the students to look for one word, the first word in a sentence, the last word in a sentence, the first letter of a word, a space, etc.



Part Four: Interactive Writing (5 minutes)

• We share the pen, writing a sentence that follows the pattern of the story. I have the students write the dominant consonant sounds that they can hear. We then cut up the sentence and put it back together. One student  gets to take the cut-up sentence home.

Students who are able to identify 40 letters get a different plan. Here is the emergent readers lesson plan format. 

Part One-Sight word review

We begin the lesson by doing a quick review of three previously taught sight words. Each time the students write a word correctly, I mark it down on a recording sheet. After the student has written the word independently several times, I am confident that it is a known word. You get good at figuring out who knows the word and who is averting their eyes to try to look at someone else's board. :)

Part Two- Book introduction and reading

Next, I introduce the story and any new vocabulary the students will need to know. We may quickly preview the story and make predictions, but we don't spend a ton of time before we get down to the nitty gritty business of reading. This is where it looks like your usual guided reading lesson. The students quietly read the story while I monitor and support if needed. I usually take a running record on a student at this time.

Before, during, and after reading, I encourage students to use our strategies to figure out unknown words. After reading, we discuss the strategies the students used and talk about any tricky parts we encountered. If there is enough meat to the story to discuss it, we will talk about the events and our connections to the story.

Part Three-Teach one new sight word

I ALWAYS have the students build a new sight word with magnetic letters. We may also play "mix and fix" where the students mix up the letters and put it back together, saying the letters in order each time. We also write the word on a white board and sometimes play "what's missing?" where I simply write the word on a white board missing one or two letters and the students have to identify the missing letter(s).

Part Four- word study

Finally, we do some quick word work. It may be a sort, sound boxes, or making words with magnetic letters.

And that's the end of the emergent guided reading lesson...BUT WAIT! This is a two-day plan! On the second day, the students practice sight words, reread the story, and practice the new sight word much like day 1. But in place of word study, we do guided writing in their guided writing journals. This is usually a sentence that I dictate to the students.

I hope this gave you a better picture of what your child is doing in guided reading!