How exactly is "guided Reading" supposed to teach

They need to have an understanding of the code of reading, the phonics behind the visual (orthographic) the printed word that matches the sounds that we use in our everyday speech. I think you may want to incorporate more activities with fingerplays, onset and rhyme, with alliteration so that he develops the necessary phonemic awareness. If he has speech and langauge issues this will really help him with developing his auditory system and diminishing the speech delays. I have a list of books that I can make a copy of and send you that feature phonics sounds all throughout the alphabet. Also a song like apple apple A, A, A, Baby, Baby b, b, b. This uses the sounds, not the letter names and the kids love it…This type of music is used in kindergarten and first grade intervention programs for children with speech and language delays. I have found using a fun multi-sensory musical approach really helps the children with speech and language issues make up for lost time.

this has to be the best and most honest question ever asked on this bulletin board, yeah, just how do kids learn to read by reading pictures, i would like to know that to!

First of all, it sounds like you are doing exactly what is needed — keep up the good work!

Second, the disastrous non-teachers out there have now apparently co-opted yet another useful term.
“Guided oral reading” is a phrase used by many good teachers; in the NIH/NICHD report on teaching reading (a very valuable source of information; look on the LD In Depth section of this board) the phrase is used as I use it, to mean following along with the child as he reads aloud and helping him sound out new or difficult words. This is a very valuable method to help the child read connected text and to develop interest, fluency, and independent analysis of new vocabulary; I hope you’re doing it.

The “guided reading” that you describe is nothing like this. What you are describing is one version of “whole language”, the most recent fad in educationist circles, and now completely discredited.(See the article “Whole Language Lives On” on the LD In Depth section of this board). Most of us here refer to this approach as “hope and guess”. You hope the child will pick up reading through the pores by some form of magic, and the child guesses frantically. No, it doesn’t teach reading. There are three typical patterns: Some children flounder around wildly until someone takes pity on them — a parent or grandparent or aunt or older sibling or neighbour or a flash on Sesame Street or sometimes a tutor — and tells them the secret that the letters in a word represent sounds in speech in some way or another. The child picks up a little bit of phonics here and a little bit there in a disorganized and random way, and manages to read but with many errors and mispronunciations and with weak spelling. Other children have amazingly good visual memories and can recognize a huge number of words by mentally photographing them. If they also have good verbal memories they learn spelling totally disconnected from reading by reciting letter names. These kids hit a brick wall usually between Grades 3 and 5 level, when the memory banks have reached their limit and there are too many similar-looking words and the frequency of repetition of any one word (as for example how often you see “frequency”) is too low to keep the memory going. They either stick at elementary reading level for life (think of the number of people you meet in stores etc. who can’t read forms or instructions or ingredients etc.), or have to go back and painfully unlearn all their habits and re-learn basic phonics. The third group remain as non-readers, some in special-ed classes and some as troublemakers and dropouts. (and think how many of those problems the schools are coping with.)
. The problem with bringing all of this home to the practitioners of hope-and-guess is that they work on the kids for one year, during which time rote memory skills give apparent success and the kids who pick up phonics elsewhere are also claimed as successes; the difficulties show up anywhere from one to four years later, and they can wash their hands of responsibility and blame the teachers in the upper grades.
One of the greatest weaknesses in school systems is the lack of a big-picture view and real long-term planning; whatever you do to change your reading program this year will only show its real merits twelve to twenty years down the road, when the graduates leave high school and enter advanced studies and/or careers. Since most political organizations think of four years as “long-term”, these basic foundations are hard to communicate.

Agree with Victoria — Guided Oral reading is an important part of reading. THe Journal of Learning Disabilities had an interesting article by Rebecca Felton, I believe, where two groups of students in reading classes were compared. The teachers used standard basals; the variable that varied was how the teachers made corrections. If the teacher guided the students to sound words out as a first strategy, as opposed to guiding them to consider pictures or context, at theend of the year, those students were significantly better at sounding out multisyllable words and nonsense words.

“Guided Reading” is the new buzz word. In my graduate education days we learned to conduct DRTA’s, directed reading-thinking activity. This was a specific method of teaching reading in context with an emphasis on reading comprehension development via the use of specific questions intended to get the student’s attention to the text.

Before the DRTA there was the DRA. This was a commonly used structure for reading a basal reader story. First the new vocabulary words were pretaught. Then the teacher asked the students to read to find out the answer to a question she specified. The teacher might stop the students at one or more points in the reading to have them answer her specific question and to pose the next teacher directed question.

The difference between the two approaches was that the DRA was teacher-dependent. It emphaized comprehension, but did not teach or create independent thinkers who could apply comprehension techniques to their reading. In the DRTA the teacher’s role of more that of a facilitator.

Guided reading is the current buzz word. Guided reading, like whole language, can mean almost anything. However, there is an intended structure to teaching a basal reader story.

I would like to invite you to make the distinction between guided reading and skill instruction. They are not mutually exclusive. The specific skill instruction may take place before or after guided reading. Guided reading is the technique used by the teacher to provide the students with guided practice in using the skills and strategies that are being taught.

Hmmm…that is interesting. Rebecca Felton is working with the state of NC right now to improve instruction for LD and other special ed. children. FINALLY they have decided to try out some research proven methods and materials like LANGUAGE! and Wilson. Too bad they didn’t know about PG. But those two programs would be a vast improvement over what is being used now! Maybe, just maybe one of these days it will filter down to the local districts and we might see remediation taking place instead of the current fad, inclusion. It will be a very happy day if it ever happens.

Janis

They’ve been working to get these things into the schools for a long time — it’s not that they’ve finally done it, it’s that they’re finally being allowed to try it. And many of them do know of PG.

Unfortunately, not around here! I had to pay for my own PG training and also any Lindamood Bell that I take this summer. I didn’t want to be retired by the time they decided to train us in something useful!

Janis

Victoria said everything I would have said. Guided oral reading that is research based is a critical element of a quality balanced reading program. However, the buzz word “guided reading ” that comes out of thinly veiled whole language programs is based on just what Victoria said - magic. Or the believe that children will soak up reading naturally through vast exposure to literature presumably by osmosis. Proponents of faddish “guided reading” will avoid decodable text, another research-validated critical link along the way to becoming a fluent reader.

Reading “Whole Langugage Lives On” by Louisa Moats (on this website) is the best way to educate yourself to evaluate whether your school is using this disasterous method or not.