Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Guided Reading, Part II~ Paperwork!

Guided reading takes up an hour of my day and seems to go by so quickly! Every time we get into a great discussion or start to make deeper connections, I feel like it's time to switch groups! I really would be on board with a bit longer school day so that I had a few extra minutes with each group.

Anyway, in my last post I described how my co-workers and I switch between classes for guided reading. We eased into it at first by only having 2 teachers switching. Two years ago we moved to 3 teachers and this year we have 4 teachers! With so many teachers and students in the mix now, it's REALLY important that we stay organized with tracking the student progress. This is where my Guided Reading Binder comes into play!
This bad boy is a 3" binder.

This is where everything related to guided reading from my students lives! I assign each student in my class a number that they use for everything. In my binder, I use numbered tabs to give each student a section. The number makes it really easy to just empty at the end of the year and be ready to go for next year! I keep any running records, notes, etc. from the student behind their tab. Since many of my students read with other teachers in group, they bring back the running record with them, I read it over and look at the teacher's notes, and file it behind their divider.


Excuse the terrible picture quality! This is an example of a running record that was done!
I know MANY teachers who can take a running record using the check marks to 100 words, the way most of us learned how to do it. I am NOT one of those people. Over the years we have typed up and saved the first 100-120 words of the book we are using that day to use as the running record. It really helps with the switching since I may not be familiar with the book anther teacher is reading. I also like to see their errors in context when I go back and analyze it. We literally have 100's of these typed up and saved on our school's server to use for various books. It only takes a minute or two but is really helpful for us!

My planning sheet! It has space for the date, book, level, sight words to introduce, and vocabulary.
The next step of organization is the planning of reading groups. While we base our model off of Jan Richardson, we have modified it to suit our styles and needs. We started off by using her lesson plan models for each book and have been using it for so long now that we rarely need to reference them. We have them typed and saved for our new teachers to use when they are beginning guided reading. This is the planning sheet I am using this year. It's fairly basic, but is perfect for what I need. Each week when I plan, I go through and write the date, book title, and DRA level for the 2 books I am using that week. Then I record the sight words I want to do on the white boards and the vocabulary I need to introduce. I keep a note next to the sight words once I've taught the lesson of who missed the word. If the majority miss it, it becomes a word for the next week as well.
Running record notes page!
Since some of the students are from the other classes, I send their running record with the notes I've recorded back to their homeroom teacher. I record the information on this page for myself. I keep track of the level, their accuracy, how many words a minute they read, and any things I noted. This helps me refer back to what I worked on with that student, if they are missing the same thing each week, etc. I use this to gauge when the group as a whole is ready to move to the next level.

The last part of our guided reading group is comprehension. Jan Richardson's plan has a very brief section for comprehension, so this is an area we have modified. We have a very high ESL population and want to be sure that they not only are reading the words but are understanding the story. This is also what we use to take a reading grade for the week. Our school uses Accelerated Reader. If a book we are using has an AR test, the students will take that as their comprehension quiz. For books without an AR quiz, we create a quiz and save it to reuse.
This page is where I record each of their comprehension scores. 
The last piece of our guided reading lesson is guided writing. We mostly use graphic organizers to focus on a certain skill, such as text to self connections, story elements, using transition words, etc. 

These pages are all in the front of the binder behind a divider for that group. It's taken me a few years to become truly organized with my guided reading data and it has made a huge difference in how I analyze their progress and the effectiveness of my teaching. As a freebie I am sharing my guided reading organizer sheets with you!

You can CLICK HERE to download these forms from my TeachersPayTeachers store or CLICK HERE to get it on GoogleDocs.

Please comment if you have any questions or comments about guided reading in my classroom or yours!



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