Does anyone out there use guided reading with their special ed. students? Is it effective? What are the pros and cons? I hope someone responds. Thank you.
Re: guided reading
Hasn’t guided reading been used as a term in Whole Language. I think this is the “phonics” part of it. The “phonics” in Whole Language consists mainly of finding “word families” ie words that end or begin the same way. For explain there is “glow”, “slow”, “snow” but then you get the word “now”. There are prolly zillions of such examples.
I’d take a look at Reading Reflex by McGuinness. There are some other better phonics approaches than the ones used by Whole Language.
—des
Re: guided reading
“Guided reading” is one of those lovely jargon terms that basically can mean anything you want it to mean.
When it’s done *right* (even in a whole language program, it’s possible :) ) this is a critical part of making sure an individual student is “getting it.” Students are corrected as they read (here’s where there’s disagreement - an awful lot of research indicates that guiding students to phonics cues first makes for increased accuracy and fluency in the long run, though for the short run it doesn’t matter) and a good story is shared.
IN the real world it often gets rather short shrift, is done as a generic group thing that’s torture for the struggler and is endured.
What exactly do you mean by guided reading?
Many of us do some form of what the National Reading Panel calls “guided oral reading” which is to say having the student read aloud while directing him/her as appropriate to self-correct, sound out, note irregularities, etc. This is, as the NRP/NIH report verifies, one of the central techniques in developing real reading skill.
On the other hand the phrase “guided reading” has been used for a number of other, non-productive activities as well. So it depends what you are asking.