There are five simple steps I follow for my guided reading lesson in kindergarten. It doesn't matter if I've hashed out what I'm doing with my group for hours in advance, or if I'm just fumbling through that particular week, these five steps are easy to follow no matter what amount of planning you've done!
1. Phonemic Awareness: the best bang for your buck in the phonemic awareness realm is blending and segmenting phonemes because those are the skills most directly tied to reading. If the assessment your district uses requires your students to substitute or omit phonemes, then be sure you're working towards that goal during this portion of the lesson. Otherwise, focus on the blending and segmenting during a guided reading lesson in kindergarten. Once students have mastered this, use this time to briefly review blending and segmenting and maximize time spent reading the book (Step 4 of the guided reading lesson). If you'd like more ideas on differentiating within groups for phonemic awareness, check out my video on phonemic awareness instruction.
2. Phonics Skill: In your guided reading lesson plan for kindergarten, have a phonics skill each week or so. Make sure it is the level of difficulty of the students' reading level. Do a word sort or other activity with the phonics skill. A great resource for that is Words Their Way. They've got sequential activities and spelling patterns to use with your students. Pictured here is another resource you can use for this. It is a nice supplement to Words Their Way, and can be found in my TpT store.
3. Sight word practice: For this portion of the guided reading lesson in kindergarten, I have sight word flashcards that I have students review. During this time, I only give them the sight words that I've already taught them in whole group instruction. I give each student 5 cards or so, and they read silently. When I say "switch" every student passes their stack of cards to the person on the right and we rotate cards. That way I'm maximizing the amount of time each child spends reviewing their cards, instead of listening to one child at a time read the cards. They all are reading silently and I'm listening to everyone.
4. Read the book: Make sure the book you choose in your guided reading lesson plan for kindergarten is at the group's instructional reading level. If they are at an independent reading level of 8, then their instructional level is a level 10. (Side note: if your group is at a reading level 10 you probably don't want to be doing phonemic awareness during guided reading time anymore). During this time, you preview the book. You can take a picture walk, looking at what might happen. You can also present students with difficult words they'll encounter in the text, and discuss their meaning and spelling before reading the book. Once they're ready to read the book, you as the teacher must make sure that if you see someone come across a difficult word, prompt them to use their reading strategies to figure out the word.
5. Comprehension: Once they've read the book, talk about what happened. The text structure of the story will guide your questioning. You can use graphic organizers, such as Beginning Middle End, or a Problem/Solution one. If the text is expository, you can discuss main idea and details. Also be aware of levels of questioning. There are "right there" questions, and there are those that require the reader to delve into the book, or infer certain things from the text and pictures. Both are valuable, but make sure you have a healthy mix of the two.
1. Phonemic Awareness: the best bang for your buck in the phonemic awareness realm is blending and segmenting phonemes because those are the skills most directly tied to reading. If the assessment your district uses requires your students to substitute or omit phonemes, then be sure you're working towards that goal during this portion of the lesson. Otherwise, focus on the blending and segmenting during a guided reading lesson in kindergarten. Once students have mastered this, use this time to briefly review blending and segmenting and maximize time spent reading the book (Step 4 of the guided reading lesson). If you'd like more ideas on differentiating within groups for phonemic awareness, check out my video on phonemic awareness instruction.
3. Sight word practice: For this portion of the guided reading lesson in kindergarten, I have sight word flashcards that I have students review. During this time, I only give them the sight words that I've already taught them in whole group instruction. I give each student 5 cards or so, and they read silently. When I say "switch" every student passes their stack of cards to the person on the right and we rotate cards. That way I'm maximizing the amount of time each child spends reviewing their cards, instead of listening to one child at a time read the cards. They all are reading silently and I'm listening to everyone.
4. Read the book: Make sure the book you choose in your guided reading lesson plan for kindergarten is at the group's instructional reading level. If they are at an independent reading level of 8, then their instructional level is a level 10. (Side note: if your group is at a reading level 10 you probably don't want to be doing phonemic awareness during guided reading time anymore). During this time, you preview the book. You can take a picture walk, looking at what might happen. You can also present students with difficult words they'll encounter in the text, and discuss their meaning and spelling before reading the book. Once they're ready to read the book, you as the teacher must make sure that if you see someone come across a difficult word, prompt them to use their reading strategies to figure out the word.
5. Comprehension: Once they've read the book, talk about what happened. The text structure of the story will guide your questioning. You can use graphic organizers, such as Beginning Middle End, or a Problem/Solution one. If the text is expository, you can discuss main idea and details. Also be aware of levels of questioning. There are "right there" questions, and there are those that require the reader to delve into the book, or infer certain things from the text and pictures. Both are valuable, but make sure you have a healthy mix of the two.
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