Professional Development

Balanced Literacy and Guided Reading

Essential Understandings:Guided Reading

• What a guided reading class should look like. (organization, environment, procedures and what students are doing)

• Template that will be used to communicate guided reading lesson plans; outside of district’s expectations.

• How the introduction or day 1 with a group may look.

Essential Understandings: Balance Literacy Session

-The components of Balanced Literacy.- How to implement an Interactive Read aloud.- Build a literacy schedule for the

purpose of planning and implementing components of Balanced Literacy.

Components of Balanced Literacy

Descriptors

Benefits of an Interactive Read Aloud

• Explicit teaching of comprehension skills. To help achieve better outcomes, all ReadWorks lessons provide teachers with specific, measurable learning objectives and give students language for modeling comprehension skills.

• Frequent interactive read-alouds. ReadWorks lessons in grades K-4 combine reading and listening to help younger readers develop comprehension skills.

• Use of the gradual release of responsibility methodology. All ReadWorks lessons let the teacher first model reading comprehension skills and then slowly release responsibility to the student through practice and eventually independent work.

• A robust approach to vocabulary. ReadWorks lessons teach vocabulary directly and indirectly, and give the teacher the language for introducing new words.

• Intentional background knowledge development. ReadWorks lessons take advantage of the fact that students comprehend more when they already know something about the content.

• Text structure and syntax. ReadWorks lessons provide teachers with content and guidance to help them instruct students in recognizing and understanding non-fiction and narrative text structures. In addition, lessons focus on student comprehension at the sentence level where comprehension often breaks down. [Details]

Formative Assessment

• What is guided reading? • What are the essential components of guided

reading?