Guided reading is an essential part of your reading instruction but it’s usually only a small chunk of time each day. You need to make the most of that time! So how do you do that? I am sharing 3 things you should have at your guided reading table to save you time and to help keep your students engaged.  

What is at my Guided Reading Table?

1.  Tools to teach DECODING STRATEGIES

First grade readers are decoders in their purest form. They have learned that to read they need to sound words out. If you ask a first grader how to solve an unknown word they will say “sound it out” every time. We need to teach them that there are lots of other ways to figure out unknown words. I do this during guided reading by introducing them to different decoding strategies and the stuffed animals that go with each. I created a set of Decoding Strategies Posters with animals to teach each strategy. Students are immediately hooked when the stuffed animals are used to model strategies. For instance, when I introduce Stretchy Snake we take turns coiling him up and stretching him out as we stretch out words.  

However, it is not practical to keep the stuffed animal on the tables or you will have the opposite of engagement – total distraction!  To keep the strategies foremost in their mind I created a few student tools to go with the posters. When we are working on a particular strategy I give the students a decoding wand with the character on it.  Later on, when they are more confident readers with a variety of strategies in their toolkit, they can use a bookmark.

I teach the decoding strategies in approximately the same order every year ~ Eagle Eye, Stretchy Snake, Chunky Monkey, Lips the Fish, Skippy Frog, Flippy the Dolphin and lastly Tryin’ Lion. Click any of the images to check out the resource or click {HERE}. 

2.  Tools to teach READING COMPREHENSION

When it come to teaching comprehension skills I have a confession to make. Many times I struggled to figure out what exactly to ask my students or how to word it. We do not use a particular reading series so I glean resources from many places. Identifying key comprehension questions for text was sometimes a bit difficult. That is why I decided to invest the time and make myself this handy (and portable) resource for any non-fiction text, that covered all the different comprehension strategies that I teach. Enter Comprehension Checks!  I placed the question cards on a ring and keep a set at my guided reading table.  I leave another set at our carpet area to use during shared reading.  

The Comprehension Checks are color coded and organized by reading strategy. There are multiple questions for each strategy. On each card you will find the question and then “look-fors” – what you might expect your students to say or think in order to answer the question. This extra information makes the cards more teacher friendly. 

3.  Tools to teach PHONEMIC AWARENESS

I hope you have found some new resources to make your guided reading time more effective and engaging.  If you are looking for ideas for things your students should use to increase engagement during guided reading then check out this post by clicking on the image below.