The Teacher Mom Life: Transitional Guided Readers from The Next Step In Guided Reading…

I am writing today as part of the most impressive book study I have had the pleasure of being a part of. I am reading “The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson. I am a second grade teacher and am covering the guided reading group that I see the most often. Special thanks to all the #guidedreadinggals for making this book study possible!

If you teach grades 1-3, you have seen them…sometimes they are seen in K and even sometimes in grade 4…They are the transitional readers…
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They read on GRL I-P and bring with them a variety of skills and concepts for reading text. These are my favorite readers because they are exactly what their role implies. They are transitioning from the skill and basic strategy levels of reading into the land of deeper comprehension and conversation with literary and informational texts. Having said, this….I learned way more than 3 things that I wanted to share with you all today.
1. Assessment for these guys is fairly simple since you should have access to data from previous guided reading assessments. All you really need to assess these kiddos is a running record with some comprehension questions and a word study inventory. The guided reading assessment allows you to identify which guided reading instructional level for the student and the word study inventory allows you to know which word study skills you can work on with that student during small group instruction.
2. Transitional readers can and often are a diverse group of readers…They come with control of many skills but also demonstrate the need for quality instruction in many areas. You can group students within two GR levels apart in your guided reading groupings, but pay attention to the running record and your other assessment data…just because the guided reading levels are close, the reading strategies and sub-skills may be very different. The great thing about the lesson plan for this group of readers is that it leaves much room for differentiating within the groups, but you don’t want to make yourself go crazy. Try to keep things together when you group so you are able to stay focused on instruction.
3. This is NOT A TIME FOR STUDENTS TO READ SILENTLY. Transitional readers are still learning much about how to read. This group is a great place to make use of anecdotal records when working with students during guided reading time. When these students are reading during the first two-three days (10-15 of the entire guided reading lesson, you are going to listening to students read and coach with teaching points specific to that students needs. You are going to be taking notes about what strategies they are using and over what skills and strategies you coached them. Looking over these notes will allow you to make instructional decisions about whether or not that student is ready to move to a different GR level and also possibly to another group.
4. The average rate of progress for transitional readers is one alphabetic level every 8-9 weeks. If you are familiar with RTI, that is the optima time frame for tier instruction before making further instructional decisions.
5. FLUENCY…this is like the dirty “F” word of the reading world. I am not going to go into that debate other than to say I think fluency has a bearing on comprehension. But, I learned from this chapter that students will certainly display a higher rate of fluency with literary text than they will with informational text for two very very good reasons. One being the diet of reading material in the world of a young child. They are exposed to so many more literary texts from birth to transitional readerhood and they are very familiar with the format. Informational texts are presented in several organizational structures and the exposure to them is not as prevalent. Students are reading these for a different purpose, to gain information. Thus to digest the information, this text type they read more slowly and take information in from graphic sources as well. I certainly do and I am guessing you do as well.
6. There will be fluent decoders, who need work in the basic retellings of text and you will teach them to retell literary then teach them to retell informational text. One is easier than the other to teach based on the same fluency principle listed in bullet 5.
There was a lot to learn from the reading of this chapter But before I move on, there was one quote that I will carry with me…

”Teach with Power and Purpose.”

Having the knowledge base from this chapter will allow you to do this with the transitional reader and move them from the skill and basic strategy level into the world of deeper understanding of text.

So now you are ready to teach like crazy. How does it work…what are the implications for my classroom?
1. The lesson sequence for transitional readers is typically 3 days. It can be 4 depending on the length and complexity of the text and if your group is working on mostly decoding and fluency or are your working more toward monitoring for meaning and deeper comprehension. This works great for the typical schedule of whole group Mondays, small groups on Tuesday-Thursday and Friday Assessment days!
2. I said it before and it is true with these students…They won’t all need word study. This is part of the lesson plan structure for transitional guided reading but when you go back to your initial assessment data and look at the word study inventory, some will have mastered them and you can devote more time to teaching comprehension strategies.
3. Guided Writing!!! This is the biggest and best classroom implication for transitional guided readers. This is the most important when you are working within the Common Core Standards. I know not everyone reading this is held to these standards. However, being able to respond to reading is important no matter what standards to which you are held accountable. During guided writing, students are learning to respond to text through a written retelling of what they read. They write, with your support and guidance, a coherent, vivid, rich retelling of text. They practice many important conventions during this time like spelling, organization, complete sentences, mechanics and varied sentence structures. All this happens because you are right there to guide them through the process.

There was a whole big bunch of stuff for this chapter but what I thought was most helpful and what children and teachers alike could benefit from is the teaching points! I thought they were concise and easy to teach. They are also what I teach most often. I tend to try to get kids to use strategies that most adults use when they read and self monitor. This packet will be available for half off at Tobi Sadler’s Teacher StoreTobi Sadler’s Teacher Store until Midnight tonight! Any new followers to my blog and anyone who leaves a blog post comment will get the book mark portion of this packet for free! Make sure to leave your email address in comments.