Guided Reading Video Clip- Kate Neal

The video I watched showed a teacher’s strategies on how she implemented guided reading in her classroom. The teacher believed that guided reading was the most important part of her students’ day. She mentioned that guided reading is a time where you can see how much a student knows, what skills they use consistently, and what needs to be worked on. This is basically what we have learned in class about guided reading. However, she goes on into detail about how she uses guided reading. The teacher has set up 3 different reading levels in which she uses the same plan for in each level. The first level is the non-reading level, the second is the pre-reading level, and the third is the reading level. The teacher has a goal of meeting with each student at least 2 times a week. She was very well organized in the fact that she has specific bins in tact for each student to place their reading items. The bins have their names on the outside of them and also states the day in which the teacher meets with the specific student.
At the beginning of the guided reading activity, the teacher has the children read a review book for a warm up. Then she introduces a new book and does a picture walk so the entire class can look at the pictures; this is how she prepares them for the upcoming reading. After this, the children start to read on their own. As we have discussed in class, the children should read at their own pace. After the reading, the teacher conducts a mini lesson that could deal with beginning and ending sounds, phonemes, sight words etc.
Another activity that she has the children do that’s pretty neat is using their fingers to write in shaving cream. This gives them the opportunity to look at one letter at a time and is fun for them to do. Lastly, she has the children reread their story before they join back as a class. When they join back as a class, the children are excited to share interesting things about their readings.
A lot of this stuff is very similar to what we have been learning in class over the past several weeks. I liked how the teacher was very organized and she gave the children a set schedule on when she would be meeting with them during guided reading. I will also plan on using the shaving cream as an activity in my future classroom.
Here is the website you can find my video on:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17mnwPrCTFQ