Guided Reading YouTube Video (Emilea Bade)

The YouTube video about guided reading that I chose to watch was Modeling Guided Reading FAQ. In the video a first grade teacher, Candice Bookman, answers questions about how guided reading is structured in her classroom at Lawrence Elementary. The main structure of her guided reading was similar to the example that we saw in class last week because she calls students over in small groups to work with her while the other students are working at centers. In the video Candice gives us more specific details of guided reading strategies that she uses and I found that many of these were great ideas that were helpful to me as a future teacher.
One of the things that Candice did that I liked was the way that she grouped her students for guided reading. She said that her groups changed from class to class depending on which students needed work with which specific skills. When she makes the groups she puts them in groups that are named by color, but she only uses the color groups so that she knows which students go in which group. When she calls the students over to do their guided reading, she calls them by name instead of by group color. This way her students don't get the feeling that they are being grouped by level or ability. When she is teaching a skill some of the things she does are writing words on a white board, playing a game, or simply going over reading and comprehension strategies. Also, Candice is sure to take detailed notes during lessons and reading time to track where each student is and where they should go next. This helps her not only monitor her students' progress but she can also use the notes to help her form groups. Another interesting thig that Candice does is that she has what she calls book bags. Each student in the class has a book bag which is a Ziploc bag that contains book that they have read in guided reading, books that they have chosen from the browsing box, as well as books that the teacher has placed in the bag for the student. The students use these bags to practice reading when they have extra time in the classroom and they can also take them home to practice reading with their families. Candice also has browsing boxes in her classroom for her students. The browsing boxes are containers that each contain a certain level of books. She has them set up so that each container is labeled and students can go to their level and choose a book. Having the browsing boxes allows her students to select books to read that are of interest to them, that way the teacher is not always choosing what the students read. Candice had some interesting strategies that she used for guided reading that I would most likely consider in my classroom in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txC-Qo_8GiU