Guided and Independent reading in Room 6

Guided and Independent Reading for 8-9year Readers and Beyond

To be classified as an 8-9 yr old reader or above a student must achieve more than 95% in accuracy and 70% in comprehension.  If they achieve 90 or 100% in comprehension they would be tested on the next level, but 70-80% comprehension determines the instructional reading age.

By this stage students have a strong sense of what they like to read as well as what they are able to read.  They read for sustained periods and they sustain meaning in longer texts over time, e.g. reading chapter books over days.  They are generally reading accurately, but it’s whether or not they fully comprehend what they read that is the key.  Without comprehension reading is useless.  Once the process of reading has been mastered students need to look for sense.  They have moved on from learning to read and are now reading to learn.

In class I have 2 large groups with 8 or 9 students in each who are independent readers. I have 3 smaller instructional groups as well, but those students are still learning to read.  They need to hear themselves read and I need to hear and watch what they are doing and prompt them when necessary to use strategies to decode text that independent readers do automatically. 

At an independent reading  level our instructional reading sessions are all about Guided Reading, where they are silent reading for the most part.  It’s very productive in that it reduces the emphasis on reading aloud and the trappings that go with it.  Reading aloud is seen as a separate skill for plays, sharing writing and poetry and so. 

During a session, after the initial pre-reading tasks like discussing the title page, flicking through looking for clues as to the text type and making predictions, and so on, students are asked to read a chunk of text at a time, in their heads.  Then the fun begins – I question and I instruct.  Questions and instructions have to be relevant, clear, unambiguous and answerable.  I have students referring to the text, skimming, cross-checking, rereading, using what they know about words and sentence structure, and looking for clues to confirm their predictions and inferences.  They are asked to identify and summarise the main ideas, make and justify their inferences and interpret any new words and figurative or technical language.  We talk about the features and purpose of the different text types and use any visual features to help navigate and understand texts.  Discussing their responses to text is the key.  There is a place for reading aloud.  Students love to read out the quote from the text that justifies their thinking.

To parents with independent readers, I encourage you to continue to read with your child regularly and use the ideas I have mentioned - silent reading and talking!  A bit of patience is involved with allowing for ‘reading and thinking time’, but you will be helping your child to read as a good reader does.  The more reading and talking about text content and structure that is done, the more likely your child will be able to organise their ideas for writing and achieve in other areas of the curriculum.

I have a couple of quotes to finish – obvious ones, but quite pertinent I think: 

‘Reading a wide variety of texts will enrich and extend students’ oral language’. (NZ Curriculum)                   

‘At every level, reading more pages in school and for homework each day is associated with higher reading scores’. (US Dept. of Ed.)