Today was the last in a series of trainings I attended with a cohort on Balanced Literacy and NUA (National Urban Alliance). Our balanced literacy component focus for the day was guided reading. Our thinking map of the day was a flow map. To combine the two we discussed guided reading as three or four parts: planning, before reading/priming, during reading/processing and after reading/retaining.
After Reading
Because I often run out of time for much after reading work I was glad to learn that's the least important part, according to some! All the possible extentions don't matter as much because most of the precious guided reading time should be dedicated to actual reading and the practicing of strategies.
However, guided discussion should ideally happen. When texts are shorter especially, students should be encouraged to reread the text. I often have students reread to a buddy to increase motivation and provide peer-models. One type of guided discussion I have tried successfully is to discuss the use of the day's stategy. For example, if we're practicing text-to-self connections, students tell about the part they connected to and what it reminded them of. I guide their learning by stating how that could help them understand the story better. They love sharing their stories! In the lesson demoed today, the students practiced the strategy of looking for a small word in a big word. They used a post-it to mark where they used the strategy. At the end, they shared what tricky word they solved with the strategy.
The other new idea I loved was to teach students to ask each other questions. The kind of questions teachers might ask when conferring or questions that assess the state assessment stems, for us WASL stems.
I am a student at the
I am a student at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. One of the classes I am taking is about Balanced Literacy and the best way to approach it. I like your idea of having the students tell about the part they connected with. This shows their comprehension also. I like this idea a lot.
Neat Ideas
I am currently a student at Indiana-University studying elementary education. I am always looking for new things that I could incorporate into my future classroom. I think these things are a great idea. I am placed in a second grade classroom for field experience and the cooperating teacher gives the children silent reading time, however, I can not get past the fact that the students just don't understand the meaning of silent reading, meaning that they can't sit still or they just flat out don't read. I think this buddy system would not only help the students that I am working with actually get some reading out of this time, but it can also help them comprehend what they are reading. Having them share stories or even use the post-it strategy to learn new words is a great idea. The students can really help one another!
Questioning
As one of the major components of Balanced Literacy, Questioning should be taught as a series of 3 steps. Students should learn to develop questions before, during, and after they have read a story. The before questions help them to determine a purpose for reading,(using text elements, the blurb on the back, etc) the during helps with predicting outcomes, and the after helps with comprehension of the main theme (author's purpose). It also can lead to how a book could have ended in different ways, and how a sequel might develop from an ending that left the reader wondering. Questions can be written on post-its and shared during small group discussion. They can also be left in the book after a student has completed it for the next student to compare his/her own questions with the previous reader.