Guided Reading for Emergent Readers
Guided reading in kindergarten is one of those things that we know we should absolutely be doing in our classrooms, but the amount of information and ideas out there can be overwhelming! At least, that’s how I felt when I started teaching guided reading in kindergarten.
But we know it’s best practice! Every single year that I teach my students using guided reading, at least 93% of my students end the year on or above grade level. That’s how I know it’s effective!
That’s why i’m going to show you step-by-step how I easily plan for and teach a 2-day guided reading lesson with my level A emergent readers!
Emergent Guided Reading Lesson Plan
This lesson plan is pre-made because my Level A Guided Reading Unit comes with everything already planned out for you, but i’m not going to tell you that you need to purchase my unit to be successful! It’s perfect for teachers who need a soft start into guided reading or who want assistants to be able to pull groups, but really, all you need to get started planning is a book!
Day 1 Of A Guided Reading Lesson Plan
When planning a level A guided reading lesson, the first thing you will want to do is to choose a text at the right level that contains your target sight word. For this lesson, my target word was “can.” This book came in my guided reading unit, but Scholastic also makes some great nonfiction readers I highly recommend! My level A lessons are a 2-day lesson plan.
On Day 1, you will start off your lesson with an introduction of what the book is about and then a quick picture walk as a group. To do a picture walk, you will all look at the pictures on each page together to identify what students see. We don’t read the words at this time (in fact, i’ll often have them cover the words), but this is the time when I will identify any vocabulary they might struggle with when reading.
On Day 2, we will start with a mini-lesson in an area my students struggled with the day before. With level A readers, that’s usually checking the first sound and picture.
During The Emergent Guided Reading Lesson
During both days of a level A guided reading lesson, students should be whisper reading to themselves and if they finish the book, I tell them to re-read over and over again. During this time, I am listening to one student at a time, giving prompts where needed, and taking notes to help me plan my next lesson. On day 2 I may take a running record.
After the lesson, I have questions already planned out to ask about the text. Some are retell and some are to help students think deeper and make connections (not the easiest with a pattern book but I try!).
Sight Words During Guided Reading
After we read and discuss our book, we work with our target sight word. This is a sight word that my students do not have mastery of and was featured in our book. I went into depth about how I teach sight words in my guided reading groups here!
On day 2 of my guided reading lesson, I focus on using the sight word during guided writing. You can read more about how I teach guided writing here!
Word Work During Guided Reading
The last part of our guided reading lesson is word work, and to be honest, if we’re running short on time, this is usually the part I skip. If i’m being good with time, though, I can fit all the parts of this lesson into 20 minutes and I try so hard to do that because word work is so important!
We do a few different things for word work, but my go-to is a picture sort. I choose one letter sound that my students know and one target letter that they need to work on to sort.
Get Started With Guided Reading For Free!
I completely understand that you might not feel ready to fully implement guided reading independently after just one blog post! That’s why I created my Kindergarten Guided Reading Units to guide you and give you all the resources you could ever need.
Just need a place to start? I have a FREE guided reading lesson that you can try out here:
