These chapters are where you get down to the nuts and bolts of guided reading lessons, with sample lesson plans, explanations of each component, resource materials, and ways to differentiate for various student needs.

Richardson then gives suggestions for useful formative assessments related to reading and writing so that you can best decide what to teach in your guided reading lessons. Each chapter provides a profile of typical reading and writing abilities of students at these different stages, but it is important to keep in mind that these are generalized descriptors and are not meant to be all inclusive and comprehensive. The next section, which is by far the largest (comprising Chapters 2 through 6), presents strategies for teaching students at the different levels of reading ability (Pre-A, Early, Emergent, Transitional, Fluent). If you aren’t familiar with it, though, this is a great overview and will help you get started. In these first 25 pages, Richardson tells you everything you (probably) already know about guided reading – the what and the why of this very widely accepted practice. The first part is an introduction to guided reading and is comprised of the Introduction and Chapter 1. In fact, it’s spiral-bound and very much set up so that you can go to the relevant pages, read what you need to know, and put the recommendations into practice right away! Unlike many professional texts I have read, this is a resource book that does not require you to read the previous sections to understand what is being discussed. The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading can be broken down into four sections. Richardson includes with her book still make me feel that way, I think the strategies that she suggests will better help me reach that how point. The videos are always shot after the students have been able to fully master the skills and routines, making me feel like a failure when I can’t get my 28 fourth graders to sit down and read in one place for five minutes, let alone 20! The video series I’ve watched over the years show teachers in a classrom with multiple adults, a handful of students, and a film crew. I wish it had been available when I did my undergraduate work over a decade ago!įar too often, the professional texts that teachers are given about guided reading focus on the why and provide very little on the how.

When it comes to literacy instruction, Jan Richardson’s Assess-Decide-Guide framework presented in The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading is one of the most important concepts I have read. The Next Step Forward in Guided Reading: An Assess-Decide-Guide Framework for Supporting Every Reader

The next step forward guided reading