Guided reading is one of my favorite subjects to teach because I love that I can differentiate for each student to truly give them what they need to succeed. In order to have a smoothly run guided reading time, you must set up your guided reading groups for success. Groups are set up so that students with similar needs are put together.
Assess What They Know
Before you can put students in groups, you need to assess what they know and what they struggle with. In kindergarten, it can be hard to assess students on reading because most likely, they do not read yet.
I like to assess my students on the following to get a good understanding of their overall reading and letter skills:
- Letter recognition
- Letter sound
- Sight Word recognition
- Reading and Reading Comprehension
I assess students in this order and move them on according to how they do in the previous assessment.
Letter Recognition
For example, I assess all students on letter recognition. If they miss only a few, I move on to letter sounds. If they miss half or more than half, I stop there and make a note that these students need to work on letter recognition.
Letter Sound
Next, I assess if students know their letter sounds. Again, if they know most, I move them on to sight word recognition and if they know half or less, I make a note that the focus for this group should be letter sounds.
Sight Word Recognition and Reading Comprehension
For my sight word recognition and reading/reading comprehension assessments, I use a program called Fountas and Pinnel. This program sets it all up for you which makes it easy on me. I have a set of 5 sight word lists and I start by asking the student if they know any of the words on the list. If a student knows most of the words on a list, they move on to the next list. When we reach a point where they no longer know majority of the words, I stop them and make a note. The program then tells me which guided reading level they should begin at according to how many sight words they know.
If a student makes it to the point where they should begin reading at a certain level in the program, I assess them with a running record. Most kindergarteners in the beginning of the year do not make it to this point because they are pre-readers but I do usually have a handful that are ready.
After all my assessments are finished, I look over my notes of which students need support in certain areas and I group them by similar needs. I try to keep my groups to 5 students or less so they’re getting a lot of individualized attention during our guided reading groups.
Click the picture to check out some of my Guided Reading Resources.
How do you group your students?
Read how to set up your DIY Guided Reading Caddie here.
