Guided Reading
Workshop for SENCOs
March 2011
• Replaces the individualised teaching of reading with group
teaching;
• Provides a significantly higher degree of teaching time for
each child;
• Is Independent Reading; although it is conducted in groups,
children are taught to read by themselves, for themselves;
• Is taught in ability groups to allow for differentiation.
Kind of text:
Adult’s role:
•A range of texts •To share the objective
Child’s role:
•To participate in reading
•To activate background knowledge; in order to learn and
•Varied
practise skills in the
•To generate discussion by asking
formats,lively
context of lively and
questions about the text
content and
interesting texts.
appropriate for •To ensure all individuals participate
extended use.
Level of text:
A text the
group can
read with
approximately
90% accuracy.
•To encourage children to refer to the
text to support their responses
•To encourage children to ask
questions about the text
•To listen to individual children
reading
•To praise positive reading behaviours
•To reflect on the task with the
children
Book introduction
Strategy check
Independent Reading
Return to the text
Follow-up
Book introduction
Purpose:
To help children begin to think their way through the text.
(Should include lots of discussion)
To activate any prior knowledge that may help the children
to make meaning.
(Exploring language patterns, introduce vocabulary, discuss
content etc.)
To make children confident that they can succeed.
 Inexperienced readers will need more detailed
introductions than more competent readers
Strategy check
Purpose:
 To remind children of strategies they already know and can
successfully use to make meaning.
To remind the children to pay attention to certain general
reading strategies, or to specialised strategies related to
particular text
Reading the text
Purpose:
• To share learning objectives & expectations.
• To provide time for individual reading – the children should
read by themselves for themselves
• The role of the teacher is to support and guide, and listen to
individuals
- The ‘talk around text’ should focus on meaning and should
not interfere with the flow of the text.
- More generic questioning which will enhance overall
meaning should be limited to the introductory and follow-on
reading activities.
Returning to the text
Purpose:
To provide opportunities for discussion of issues raised in the
text, and to reflect on the objectives.
Group discussions could focus on:
Connections to other stories, story characters or language.
How the illustrations supported and extended the story.
What made the characters or events predictable.
What information the children have gained, what they still
want to know.
Children could share strategies they used to negotiate
meaning.
They could share:
How they managed to predict what a character said.
How they figured out an unknown word.
How and why they realised they were not making sense.
Follow-up
Purpose:
To provide opportunities for the children to re-visit the text
independently, to allow for extended involvement with the
text and reinforcement of new learning.
Session 1