So what do all the other children in your class do whilst you work with your guided reading group? Well, the traditional model suggests that the children work independently in their reading ability groups in a purposeful reading task which the groups carousel through the week (if you have five groups like many classes / schools do). I think this is where GR becomes a real challenge, not just in the management of all the independent groups but also the planning and assessment. Firstly, a lot of children are not able to work independently yet (especially if you’re in Year One) and finding reading tasks that meet the needs of the variety of learners and reading levels within your class can feel nigh impossible – for a start its hours of planning, and then you have to give time to explaining each differing activity for whichever group is doing it each day eating in to your already tight 20/30min session. Another issue is the children are often far less engaged and produce less or much poorer quality work because it never really gets followed up.
After teaching and trialling various approaches in a few different year groups over the years these are some of the things I have found most helpful with the independent groups:
- Training time: dedicate a few days /a week depending on your class to being very explicit at the beginning of the year with your ground rules for your independent groups. Make clear to them that they should not interrupt you and your group unless absolutely necessary ( you can then be guaranteed a highly entertaining conversation with your children about what constitutes ‘ absolutely necessary’ – my year one’s always came up with some wacky ideas about why they might HAVE to come and interrupt me) and reinforce the noise level you expect. It is definitely worth not having a GR group with you whilst you do this training bit. It also gives you a chance to see if there are any particular problems with the groups /the kinds of tasks you are allocating to them and adjust accordingly.
- Get a system: Have a plan displayed on the IWB or wall that shows each task the groups are doing for that day. Allocate extra time on a Monday to explaining each independent task for the week. Older children can read for themselves from the plan what task they will be doing on a given day. Create an efficient system for yourself and your class for speedy giving out of the resources needed for each activity, baskets or files to store them in, monitors to give out and tidy up etc, whatever works so this takes as little time as possible out of the GR session and doesn’t mean you spending ages doing it before school either.
- Respond to the tasks that they do: If you want them to bother with the task then make sure you mark or respond to it, and if you’re in Reception or KS1 this kind of only works if you do it there and then with them. We don’t mark fully ( as in 2 stars and a wish, ‘closing the gap’ style) for independent groups at my school but the work is marked with a brief comment if appropriate. It is also worth modelling an ‘exemplar’ task that somebody has completed to set the standard for other children when they come to do that task on their day. Having a GR book for any written tasks also seems to help with encouraging better quality work rather than sheets of paper and can act as a reading journal also. In order to do this quick check around your groups you will need to leave your GR group with a short independent task based on your focus for their reading that day or a particular common issue that cropped up during the reading, something simple so that they can be independent briefly whilst you check in and respond to your other groups.
- Use all the adults you can: If you have willing parent helpers or additional classroom support in any form GR is a great time to make use of them! You could ask a parent to support a particular reading ability group through the week or perhaps stay with a more challenging activity and work with the different groups as they are allocated to that task.
Lastly, what sorts of things might be appropriate independent activities?
Anything that involves reading or responding to reading is a good bet – avoid handwriting or practising spellings or writing journals which are ‘holding activities’ rather than purposeful reading tasks. An easy and popular choice is time to share books in the book corner or free read right through to year 6 and this reading time with friends is still so important, particularly with the continued ‘reading for pleasure’ agenda. Open ended tasks that your differing ability levels can access also work well in terms of reducing your planning and resource making time.
Some general ideas are listed below:
phonic /word games
magnetic letter work or whiteboard work with a particular phonics focus
story retelling with puppets or sequence cards / story sacks
reading on in the story or a similar book
role play in character
writing activities related to reading – e.g writing a letter to a story character / designing an alternative front cover / story mapping / character profiles / simple book reviews.
There are tons more ideas and resources online, including on my pinterest page! have a look at http://www.pinterest.com – hannon0614.
Will be back next week thinking about alternatives to GR.