The Importance of True Guided Reading  

What is Guided Reading? (True Guided Reading)

Guided reading is reading out loud to an adult, or other proficient reader, with feedback.  This is NOT independent silent reading. The key part to the effectiveness in developing skills is to provide ‘guidance’ and feedback to the student. 

In order to achieve significant beneficial impact on word recognition, fluency and comprehension:

#1 The student must read out loud to an adult (or other proficient reader) and

#2 The adult must provide correction, feedback and instruction to help the child or student develop specific reading skills.

Do not confuse this beneficial teaching technique of true guided reading with various commercial reading programs that primarily use independent silent reading. Some of these systems which do NOT meet the actual definition or achieve proven effectiveness of true guided reading even include ‘guided reading’ in the title.  True guided reading is NOT a commercial program that requires purchase of specific materials. True guided reading cost you nothing except time with your child or student and the rewards are significant!

True guided reading is simply the highly effective process of the student reading out loud to an adult or other proficient reader who is providing correction, feedback and necessary instruction. It is the feedback and guidance that is the essential criteria of guided reading that is proven to actually help the student learn and improve skills. 

Why is it Important to Conduct Guided Reading with Your Child or Student?

It is important to conduct guided reading with children and student in the learning and remediation stages because it is proven by valid evidence based research to have significant benefits in helping students improve reading skills.  Guided reading benefits both good and struggling readers. 

The validated research shows that guided out loud reading has significant beneficial impact on word recognition, fluency and comprehension across a range of grade levels.  (from National Reading Panel’s “Teaching Children to Read” Summary Report)

It is vital to recognize that the proven effectiveness of true guided reading must include the critical element of guidance and feedback.

True guided reading (student reading out loud with feedback) is highly effective in helping students build skills. In contrast, silent independent reading with little or no guidance or feedback does not achieve this effectiveness. While numerous studies show the best readers read the most and poor readers read the least, these studies are all correlational in nature and correlation does not imply causation. It may just be the good readers just choose to spend more time reading. Although it sounds like a good idea to have children read more alone, there is no research evidence that shows independent silent reading with little guidance or feedback actually improves reading skills. Think about it. If a poor reader is just sitting there flipping pages or struggling with the reading and making errors, their skills will not improve, no matter how much time they sit there. In contrast, guided oral reading instruction is proven to help students improve reading skills.  This is NOT saying students should not read on their own, or that there are no benefits for children reading books independently, or that students do not need to read more on their own. Rather, it tells us, the research clearly demonstrates to improve skills, the student needs to read out loud with guidance and feedback.  This out loud reading with guidance, correction and feedback is particularly critical in the learning and remediation (intervention with struggling readers) stages.  At more advanced levels, silent reading improves the higher skills of fluency, vocabulary acquisition and comprehension. Obviously once the student has developed skilled proficient reading skills time spent silent reading provides significant educational value in the subjects and material they read.   

Guided reading has significant beneficial effects on helping student’s develop reading skills. It is one of the most effective tools not only to improve a student’s fundamental reading skills but also to help the student develop higher level comprehension skills.  With guided reading you can directly help your child or student:

• establish fundamental skills necessary for proficient reading
• identify weaknesses and strengthen specific skills
• improve attention to detail
• build fluency
• expand vocabulary knowledge
• develop reading comprehension skills

 PLUS, guided reading is enjoyable! This is where you sit down with your child or student and have them read to you.  Guided reading offers a wonderful opportunity to share the joy of reading with your child or student. 

How Do I Conduct Guided Reading? Instructions for Conducting Guided Reading to Improve Reading Skills

General Information on Guided Reading

• Conduct guided reading with your child or student a minimum of 20 minutes/day (more is better!). This daily guided reading is particularly important in the learning and remediation stages when the student is building foundational skills. 

• The student must read out loud to you. 

• The parent/teacher/other proficient reader MUST provide correction and feedback! 

• The appropriate monitoring and feedback will change as the student’s skills develop. In the beginning, learning and remediation stages careful detailed monitoring and feedback is required and often the focus is on building foundational skills for accurate decoding. As a student’s skills advance, and they become proficient at decoding the guidance changes to primarily work on developing higher level skills. 

• Feedback and corrections focus on helping the student build missing skills or strengthen skills. 

• Either sit directly next to the student where you can both see the print OR make a copy of the material so you can follow along. Having a separate copy is sometimes preferred if you are tutoring other students or if the student does not appreciate someone ‘reading over their shoulder’. 

• While most often guided reading is conducted by adults (parents, teachers, grandparents,  ..etc), in some cases, it also can be conducted by older students to a younger student or by an older sibling to their younger brother or sister. The person doing the guidance and feedback needs to be a proficient reader and older than the student. For example, a 5th grader may be able to help a 1st grader with their reading. Peer correction should not be used to build skills. Young children really are not qualified to be helping other young children with proper guidance and feedback. And even more important, for older students in remediation, you face serious negative social implications when a peer is correcting a same age struggling reader. I strongly advice against ever having peers correct a struggling reader. This is detrimental situation that causes lasting emotional damage.  (For example, a select high school student may be able to effectively help a 4th grade struggling reader but you never want to use a 4th grade peer to correct a struggling 4th grader).

Details on How to Conduct Guided Reading & Build Specific Skills

• In the beginning, learning and remediation stages, the parent/teacher/other proficient reader must be looking closely at the printed text and providing immediate feedback. You MUST be looking at exactly what the student is reading so you can make immediate corrections. This careful monitoring of each and every word is necessary until the student has become skilled at accurate decoding. (The rule of thumb is when the student makes no more than 1 or 2 errors per page). 

• Require the student to read carefully. Teach the student to look carefully at the words instead of rushing through with ‘fast & careless’ reading.  Stopping the student at every mistake is highly effective in slowing down the ‘fast & careless’ reading. Usually, the impatient students who like to ‘rush’ do not like to be stopped. Therefore, when you stop them at every mistake they begin to read more carefully. Like anything else, the careful reading is a habit. Help the student develop good habits.

• Require complete accuracy in reading. Stop the student all errors, no matter how ‘minor’ they may appear. This includes skipped words as well as any mistake on accurately reading a word.  Stopping the errors is critical for effective remediation as you must extinguish incorrect processing as well as develop proficient reader skills. With correction on errors, often all you need to do is tap the missed word with a pencil. This signals the student to ‘look again’.
  • If the student skips a word, tap the word they missed and have the student reread it.
  • If the student reads a word inaccurately (says wrong word or misses detail of word) have him reread the word correctly. Point to the specific sound/error if necessary.
  • Do not let errors slip by, no matter how ‘small’. Make sure the student is paying close attention to all details. 
  • If the student uses the wrong choice/alternate sound, tell them something similar to “Good try, however this word uses the __ sound” (For example if the word was ‘bestow’ and the student uses the /ow/ sound for ‘ow’ instead of the correct /oa/ sound). Have the student re-read the word applying the correct sound.
• The student needs to correct their mistake. Sometimes the student has the skill to accurately read the word but either they were not paying attention or slipped back into a previous incorrect strategy (such as word guessing or visual ‘whole word’ processing). Often by ‘looking again’ the student uses the correct process and is able to accurately read the word

• If the student is unable to self-correct an error, they are lacking a necessary skill. This is when you provide guidance & feedback to explicitly teach them that skill so they are able to accurately read the word or develop the needed skill. Always make corrections and feedback to help the student learn the skill that they are missing. Focus on helping the student build the necessary skills. The next group of explanations cover lack of skills and tips for correction/feedback to build skills (This is why true guided reading is effective! You are helping the student develop skills). 
• If the student is making any tracking errors or whole word errors require physical tracking (with finger, pencil or other pointer) when reading UNTIL the student no longer makes tracking errors.  Once again, this kinetic motion helps direct correct processing of each letter/sound. The tracking also helps focus the student on the details of the word and improves attention to detail. Once the student acquires skills and is no longer making tracking errors you can drop the required pointing.  For additional information, see  Directional Tracking Explained
• If the student is ‘skipping lines’ as they read or frequently losing their place, have the use a bookmark or index card to hold under the line. The student uses the index card to mark the line they are reading. This is especially helpful in books with small print where it is easier to accidentally miss lines.
• If the student reads ‘run on’ sentences help them learn to make the appropriate pause at the end of sentences. Have the student take a breath at each period.  If necessary, place your pencil on or tap the period to remind the student to pause. While this intentional ‘stop’ and conscious breath slightly exaggerates the needed pause it helps the student begin to notice and react properly to periods. Guided reading of text is where the student develops this necessary skill of appropriate pauses and inflection.

• If the student can’t read a word because he does not know the correct sound (lacks knowledge of a sound within the word) tell them the sound and then have them read the word to you.  This is not ‘telling’ the student the entire word where all he needs to do is orally repeat the word. In contrast, this is only giving the student the knowledge he is missing and then requiring him to apply this to his reading.  This technique can also be used when student comes across code he has not yet learned For example reading ‘vacation’ before the student has learned ‘tion’=/shun/ you would tell them something similar to “the ‘tion’ partner letters have the  /shun/ sound..try sounding that out again”.  In addition, if the student misses a sound several times you know the student needs to practice that specific sound in isolation so it becomes automatic

• If the student is adding in sounds that are not there, stop them. Often students who have previously learned phonetically incorrect ‘consonant clusters’ will add sounds when they are not present. (strap as stramp, clap as clamp, sting as string, ) In this case you need to focus the student on looking carefully at the exact printed letters. You can say something similar to “look closely” as you point at the specific sounds.

• Help the student practice proper inflection and expression as part of the guided reading. Fiction is often the easiest material to help the student practice and develop skills in appropriate expression. Demonstrating and encouraging expressive reading helps students develop these skills. If the student reads an passage in a flat monotone voice, simply ask him to reread it with expression.

• Help the student with multisyllable words when necessary. Use a pencil to make light slash or scoop marks at the syllable breaks. If certain words are difficult, you can write these down for later practice in isolation. For detailed information please see Reading Multisyllable Words: Helping Students Learn How to Handle Multisyllable Words 

• Help with proper pronunciation whenever necessary. New words, especially some of the multisyllable words with the ‘lazy’ schwa, pronunciation can be tricky. The decoding is correct but the word is mispronounced.  By all means help the student learn the correct pronunciation. Tell them how the word is pronounced. Say something similar to “Good try, that was close, we actually pronounce the word _______”.  Have them repeat the word and then reread it with correct pronunciation while looking at the letters.

• Develop vocabulary as the student reads. When appropriate, stop the student at new words. If they do not understand the word, explain what the word means. Then have the student re-read the sentence so they will understand it. For details, see the article Expanding Vocabulary Knowledge: How to Help Your Child or Student Expand Their Vocabulary Knowledge  

• Work on developing specific comprehension skills. This often involves questions and discussing the material as they read along. The depth of comprehension skills increases as the student becomes older and their skills advance. Beginning comprehension is having the student simply pay attention to what they are reading. The higher-level comprehension skills have the student thinking about deeper questions such as ‘why did this happen’, and inferring ‘what do I think this means’.  For detailed instructions and information on techniques and suggestions for improving reading comprehension while guided reading see Developing & Improving Reading Comprehension Skills: Overview of Reading Comprehension & Specific Actions to Help Students Develop Comprehension 

Other tips and suggestions on guided reading

• Use high interest books or other reading material (magazine, newspaper, etc) for the guided reading.  Have the student pick out a book or other material that interests him or her.  The high interest topics help make the guided reading time something to look forward to. There is nothing like an engaging story or a fascinating subject to keep the student excited about the guided reading time.  (For example, my son loved reading any newspaper article about the Denver Broncos.) While you want the student to select material that interests them, for guided reading make sure the student also selects material that contains adequate text. The reading material needs to contain full sentences, paragraphs, and pages of text so student is actually practicing reading. Avoid graphic novels or other text that is primarily illustrations and has limited text as these do not contain adequate text to build reading skills. With valuable guided reading time, make sure student is reading real text. In the same way that ice cream is enjoyable but not nutritionally sound for a meal… students can read graphic novels and limited text options on their own time for desert after they complete the guided reading with high nutrition value real text!)

• Increase the enjoyment by reading the book together. Share the reading by alternating chapters or pages. Not only is this shared reading enjoyable, it is useful in both demonstrating and building enthusiasm for reading.

• While you should definitely incorporate enjoyable reading of the students choice, some of the guided reading can and should be done with the students classroom reading material. This ability to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ of directly developing reading skills while studying for the next day’s science test is helpful on the busy nights. The use of classroom reading material is also particularly useful with students in a classroom pullout situation. The guided reading of classroom material, whether it be the history textbook or the science unit, not only directly develop reading skills but also helps the student gain knowledge in other subjects. From a time-efficiency standpoint, many students prefer to do some guided reading with classroom material. It is also important to do some guided reading with textbooks so you can help the student develop comprehension skills with the textbook format.

Concluding Statement

Guided reading is one of the most effective and enjoyable techniques for building reading skills. I always encourage parents to conduct guided reading with their children. This free and effective technique will help your child develop skills. Teachers in the lower grades usually conduct some form of guided reading with their students, usually in small groups.  However, if schools have opportunities for adult volunteers, they can use these volunteers to conduct guided reading sessions with select students. The simple act of an adult sitting down with a student and providing support as they read has significant positive impact on reading development.