Guided Reading

Guided Reading
Ethan Tice
Franciscan University of Steubenville

Guided Reading

Introduction
Over time teachers have been trying to figure out what the best way to improve their
students comprehension skills. While many people disagree, I believe that guided reading is the
best way for students to improve these skills. Guided Reading is an instructional approach that
involves a teacher working with a small group of students who demonstrate similar reading
behaviors and can all read similar levels of texts. The text is easy enough for students to read
with your skillful support. The text offers challenges and opportunities for problem solving, but
is easy enough for students to read with some fluency. You choose selections that help students
expand their strategies (What is guided reading?).
Purpose
Guided reading was a significant benefit to me throughout my school years. Since this
was so beneficial to me I always questioned why all teachers did not use guided reading. As I
pondered about this topic, I realized that maybe guided reading was is effective and if not, what
other methods would be effective for improving reader comprehension.
One of my goals that I will accomplish during my research is to interview teachers to see
if they believe that guided reading improves a childs comprehension skills. If they do not, I will
then ask what strategy they prefer to use to improve comprehension skills. Through these
interviews along with other credible research I plan to find out if guided reading is effective and
if not, what kind of other methods would be effective for improving reader comprehension.
These are the questions that I asked when I interviewed teachers. Do you believe
guided reading improves a childs comprehension skills? How often do you use guided reading
in your classroom? If so, how often do you use guided reading to improve comprehension

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skills? If not, what other uses if any do you have for guided reading in the classroom? If you do
not use guided reading, what other ways do you assess students comprehension? By asking
these questions, I feel that I will get an accurate answer from the small portion of teachers I
interviewed.
Through my study, I believe that I will find that guided reading is an effective strategy to
improve students comprehension skills. I believe that most students are similar to myself and
really benefit from this type of instruction.
Review of Literature
What is the best way to improve childrens reading ability? There are always many
opinions on this topic (Reutzel, Spichtig, & Petscher, 2012). The article is about a study of third
grade students to determine which silent reading intervention was most effective. The study was
administered by first selecting eighty- third grade students who had been retained in the third
grade. Forty students were used for a control group and the other forty students where used as the
treatment group. Both groups were given a pre-test to see how much material they already knew.
Next the control group was split into three smaller groups. These students used different types of
reading accelerated programs including Soar to Success, Essential Elements of Reading, and
Earobics. Soar to Success is a program, which is designed to improve students comprehension
and decoding strategies. Essential Elements of Reading is a program designed to help students
reach their grade level reading expectations and improve vocabulary. Earobics is designed to
improve reading by using software and teacher based activities. The treatment group all used a
program called Reading Plus. Reading Plus is a guided reading program where students read
silently then answer a series of online questions as they read. At the end of the experiment, both
groups where given a posttest to see how much they had learned over the time that they worked

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with their program. Both groups improved significantly on their posttest. Although they both
improved, the treatment group improved slightly more. This suggests that guided reading does
help children to read more efficiently than other methods.
I enjoyed reading this study and it reinforced my belief that guided reading is one of the
best ways to improve a childs reading. I liked how they used struggling readers so that we could
rule out the fact that some children could be gifted readers. If there were gifted readers, it would
influence the results. I also did not like a few aspects about this study. I would have liked to see
more children used in the study. I believe two hundred children would give a more accurate
result. I also would have liked to see the control groups results for each program that students
participated in. Is one program better than another? Unfortunately this information was not
included in the article. Over all this was a great study and provided me with good information for
my research. This particular source did enhance my view that guided reading is effective but I
would like to find a better source that would give more concrete evidence for or against guided
reading.
As a teacher, would you facilitate guided reading in your classroom? The article I read
was Guided Reading, The Romance and the Reality by Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell. The
article refers to the romance side of guided reading and also the reality side of guided reading.
First, let us talk about the romance side of guided reading. As the article explains, guided reading
sounds like such a great way to improve childrens reading ability. Each child receives a book,
which is at his or her grade level. This pushes the child to improve their reading ability. Students
are able to choose a book, which they are interested in reading. This makes students excited to
read the text. Once they have chosen their book, they are then presented with questions, which
go along with the book. This makes students analyze what they are reading rather than just

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reading the words. This improves students reading ability and also critical thinking skills when
they predict what will happen or answer a question as they read. Now let us talk about the reality
side of things. In the classroom, teachers are pushed to keep everyone succeeding and on grade
level. This causes teachers to only focus on whether the students are reading at grade level. That
means, for students reading at grade level at the beginning of the year, they will most likely
improve little. The other reality is that teachers only have so much time to create assignments
and assessments. It is much easier to create an end of the book assessment rather than guided
reading questions. The article explains that in school we all say we will be the best teacher and
always do what is best for our students but once becoming a teacher sometimes this is easier said
than done. The article explained how guided reading is a great tool for teachers to use but can be
difficult to use. I really enjoyed this article and thought that it did make some good points.
During my research thus far on guided reading, I had just been looking at whether it was
effective or not. I never considered, until after reading this article, the actual implementing of
guided reading into the classroom. This article furthered my belief that guided reading is helpful
to students. The main question that I am still considering is how many teachers can implement
this into their classrooms. The article explained all of the factors that make it difficult for
teachers to use. I am thinking about my first year in the classroom. I can see myself busy as ever
just trying to keep my head above water and then trying to run a guided reading classroom. I am
not saying it could not be done but it would be extremely difficult to do especially early in a
teachers career this is just another factor to consider when doing my research.
Do your students read at grade level? I read the article Guided Reading Research
Based Response to the Challenge of Early Reading Instruction by Anita Iaquinta. She starts this
article off with an extremely meaningful fact. The fact is that most children who get off to a poor

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start in reading rarely catch up throughout their life. A student who is a poor reader in first grade
is eighty eight percent more likely to be a poor reader in fourth grade (Iaquinta, 2006). The
article suggests that guided reading can significantly help these poor readers to catch up to their
fellow classmates. The National Research Council estimates that forty five percent of children do
not read at grade level. This is why guided reading can be so important for students. Guided
reading allows teachers to push students independently. This allows the poor reading students to
improve along with the accelerated readers. Guided reading improves many skills that good
readers master such as decoding, problem solving, and comprehension (Iaquinta, 2006).
Improving these skills will help any student improve.
I thought that this article was helpful in my research. This furthered my belief that guided
reading is beneficial to students. I did not realize until reading this article that forty five percent
of students do not read at grade level. I believe that this is a major problem because reading is a
major part of every subject. There is no way a student can study social studies, science, or math
without being able to read. We need to spend more time in the classroom and make sure that all
of our students are given the best possible chance at excelling with their reading. Another
excellent part of this article is the charts. These charts give you specific examples of guided
questions, which really challenge the students comprehension skills. I believe these charts would
be extremely helpful when it came time to create your own guided reading questions. These
would be great ideas, which you could format to fit your particular text. This is the first time I
have seen concrete examples of guided reading. I am really starting to believe that guided
reading is the way to go and would have helped me significantly when I was in grade school.
At what age can you start using guided reading? Some teachers say that you can start as
early as kindergarten! I read the article Guided Reading with Emergent Readers by Jeanne

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Clidas, Ph.D. The author discusses how children can start using guided reading as early as
Kindergarten. Not all students are ready to begin guided reading this early. As teachers, we need
to choose the students which are ready and the ones who are not. All students are at a different
level of reading when they begin Kindergarten due to schema theory. In order to pick out which
students are ready to use guided reading, there are several things we should look for. First, we
should watch childrens behavior during shared reading, writers workshops, and read a louds to
determine who is ready for guided reading. Another characteristic of students that we need to
observe is the students interest in reading along with their attention spans. Next we should
watch for children who can generate ideas related to stories. These are the skills children must
have in order to follow guided reading. This article claims that if children can do these skills
than guided reading can begin in kindergarten. Guided reading can also be extremely helpful
with students who are English language learners. Guided reading forces students to not only say
the English words as they read but also makes them analyze the meaning of the words they are
reading.
I enjoyed reading this article and it reinforced my belief that guided reading is an
effective way for students of all ages to improve their reading skills. Although I believed that
guided reading was effective for many ages, I did not realize that it could be used at such a
young age. Originally, I believed that guided reading could be used from third grade on.
Reading this article opened my eyes to not only the fact that it can be done in kindergarten but
also how to do this. This article did support my hypothesis that guided reading is helpful to
students when trying to improve their reading skills.
What is a good way to help students who are academically challenged improve their
reading skills? I read the article Successful Guided Reading for Third Graders in a Diverse and

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Academically Challenged Classroom by Amelia A. Walker. The author discusses a teachers

experiences in the classroom. We first learn that the teacher began her teaching career in a
wealthy area where she taught privileged students. She felt that teaching was easy and extremely
rewarding. Almost every day she had parents complement her on how great of a teacher she was
and her students seemed to always understand the lessons she taught. She then moved to a
different school district where the students were from poor families. Instead of mansions, like
the last group of students, these students lived in apartments. This was when she first got a taste
of how teaching these students would be much different. These students struggled to understand
concepts in class and were not very successful especially in their reading class. This teacher
needed to find a way to help students understand the material. This was not something that she
had to worry about in the past. The teacher ended up using guided reading in her classroom. She
first began by separating students into groups based on their reading ability. She would then pick
texts that were suitable for each group. When she gave the students their book she would also
give them questions which they would have to stop an answer as they read. During this time
where they were reading in their groups the teacher would walk around and monitor each groups
reading. Of course she knew to spend more time with the struggling groups of students than the
more fluent readers. After each chapter she would have a group meeting with each group. Here
is where they would tell the teacher their answers. This is when the teacher can see if the
students are able to comprehend what they are reading along with answering any questions that
they may have. During this time the teacher would also discuss any new or challenging
vocabulary that the students may come across in the next chapter. After their discussion the
teacher would then send them back to read the next chapter with a new set of questions. Through

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using this guided reading method this teacher was able to help her students significantly improve
their reading skills. The students also seemed to enjoy this method so they were excited to learn.
This article was helpful with my research because it gave me a realistic view from a
teachers perspective. This teachers story states that guided reading is an effective way to help
children improve their reading skills. I also liked how this teacher split her students into groups
based on the students reading level. This helped the students because every student in the class
was able to be presented with material that challenged them.
The reoccurring question is Does guided reading help improve a childs reading
ability? I read the article A Case Study of the Impact of Guided Reading Groups in Second
Grade on Comprehension Improvement by Lorent Deegan and Chanin E. This study was
completed to see if there was a correlation between guided reading and students reading ability.
Four second grade teachers along with their seventy three students ages seven through eight
years old participated in this study. The study included surveys completed by both students and
teachers, teacher interviews, and focused observation of guided reading instruction. The results
from the surveys helped to discover patterns with guided reading classrooms, groups, and
teachers. The teacher interviews provided information about each teachers opinion of the
effects and outcomes of using guided reading in the classroom. The observations provided
information about how teachers implemented guided reading in the classroom. There was also a
pre and posttest given to each one of the four classrooms. These two tests showed that students
in all four classes improved significantly on their reading comprehension by using guided
reading.
While this article did support my hypothesis that guided reading is a successful way for
students to improve their reading skills, I would have liked more information. First off, I would

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have liked if there was a control group of students. The first thought that comes to mind is did
the students improve due to the guided reading or would they have improved the same amount if
they would have not used guided reading? The article also does not state how much students
improved. My question is how much did they improve? Did students improve by two percent or
fifty percent? This is information that could have been extremely valuable to my research. The
article also did not explain the way that guided reading was used. I would like to know how it
was implemented and what other strategies if any were used. If there were other strategies used
than these it would taint the results of the study. I believe that this case study was a great idea,
but there needed to be more information collected in order to strengthen the authors findings.
Methodology
I collected all of my data and results, from six articles and interviewing teachers. In order to
obtain my literature reviews, I searched reviews that provided information concerning guided
reading and its effect on literacy. I also choose teachers that were willing to speak to me about
guided reading in their class room. I wanted to make sure that the questions I asked were
specific enough that they could answer them, but also broad enough so that I could get a picture
of how this looked in their classroom. These are the questions that I chose to ask.

Do you believe guided reading improves a childs comprehension skills?

If so, how do you use guided reading in your classroom?
If so, how often do you use guided reading to improve comprehension skills?
If not, what other uses if any do you have for guided reading in the classroom?
If not, what other ways do you access students comprehension?

Although I was only able to interview three teachers, I felt that these teachers each gave me a
significant amount of information about how they use guided reading to improve a childs
comprehension skills.
Findings

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Through my research, I learned that guided reading does have a significant impact.
Reutzel, Spichtig, & Petscher was able to conduct an experiment using third graders. They split
the third graders into two groups. One of the groups was exposed to different forms of reading
intervention while the other was exposed to different types of guided reading. Reutzel, Spichtig,
& Petscher then gave each group a test to measure their ability prior to instruction. After a
years time, Reutzel, Spichtig, & Petscher, then gave the students another test to see if they had
improved. Both of the groups did improve but the test groups seemed to improve slightly more
than the control group. This experiment shows that the guided reading intervention was more
effective than the other reading practices.
I also read the article A case study of the impact of guided reading groups in Second
Grade on Comprehension Improvement by Deegan. Like Reutzel, Spichtig, & Petscher ,
Deegan, also completed a study inside of the classroom to see if guided reading was effective.
The study was completed using seventy two fourth grade students in four separate classrooms.
These students were also given a pre and post assessment. In between the two assessments,
students worked using guided reading methods. After a years time, every student had improved
in their reading ability by using these guided reading activities.
The first teacher that I interviewed was a fourth grade reading teacher. These are her
answers to the questions that I asked.
Do you believe guided reading improves a childs comprehension skills?
Yes, it breaks down the text so that students can focus on parts of it rather than the whole
text at once. After focusing on these separate pieces of the text, they can then use those parts to
have a better understanding of the meaning of the whole text.
If so, how do you use guided reading in your classroom?

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I make up my own questions. I usually do this when my children are reading novels in
the class. We usually read several chapter books as a class each year. I make up at least one but
usually multiple questions per chapter that the students must answer as they read. This makes
sure that students have comprehended the important parts of that chapter. If they hadnt already,
this forces them to go back and reread the part they did not comprehend the first time.
If so, how often do you use guided reading to improve comprehension skills?
Currently in my classroom I use guided reading every time that we read a chapter book. I
feel that this has increased my students over all comprehension of the book compared to prior
years. Before I started making questions, I had students complete an assignment after reading
the book. A lot of students had forgotten what had happened in the early chapters and could only
remember the later ones. Ever since I have had the students fill out these questions they seem to
be able to comprehend the entire text rather than just the information they had recently read. I
also believe that this teaches students how to pick out the important parts of a book while they
are reading it. When I first started teaching, I was not able to do this for every book because
making up the questions can be time consuming. After a couple of years of teaching, I now have
questions made for roughly 10 books. This gives me several options when choosing the books
that my class will focus on for that particular year.
If not, what other uses if any do you have for guided reading in the classroom?
N/A
If not, what other ways do you access students comprehension?
N/A
The second teacher I interviewed was a seventh grade reading teacher. These are her
responses to the questions that I asked her.

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Do you believe guided reading improves a childs comprehension skills?

Yes I do believe it helps with comprehending the text especially when you are dealing
with text that may not be the most intriguing. This also works great for text that students may
struggle to read. This forces them to look up the words that they may not know.
If so, how do you use guided reading in your classroom?
I use these guided questions when having students read their text book. I try to make up
one question about each paragraph. This is very time consuming but seems to really make the
students read and helps them to comprehend the material. I got this idea from a history professor
that I work with. He uses the same method with his history book. This also works out great for
him because history books are not always the most interesting things to read. Since we both
started using this method, we have seen an increase in the amount of material that our students
comprehend when they have finished reading a chapter. We also both have seen an increase in
our test scores when using guided reading.
If so, how often do you use guided reading to improve comprehension skills?
I try to use this strategy for every chapter of our books. Unfortunately, I have not made
up questions for all of my classes text books yet. I have completely completed the questions for
two of the books but still have 5 chapters left to do in the third book. These are my honors
students which is why I chose to complete this book last. By the end of the year, I hope to have
these chapters complete, as well. On the other hand, the history teacher has questions made for
each one of his chapters and says he usually adds a few more questions each year.
If not, what other uses if any do you have for guided reading in the classroom?
N/A
If not, what other ways do you access students comprehension?

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N/A
The last teacher I was able to interview was a kindergarten reading teacher. These are the
answers to the questions I asked her.
Do you believe guided reading improves a childs comprehension skills?
Guided reading is a great way to improve a childs comprehension skills.
If so, how do you use guided reading in your classroom?
I usually have designated questions that I know I will ask students to think about while
we read a book. I read these questions to the students right before I start to read them a story.
This gives the students something to look for as I read. It also starts to teach them what they
should look for when they read on their own. When we complete the book, we talk about the
answers to the questions I had previously asked. This is when I can see if the students
comprehended what was read to them. I have also read them a story without giving them
questions ahead of time. While some students can still answer them, there are also other students
who cannot.
If so, how often do you use guided reading to improve comprehension skills?
Since guided questions do help most of my students, I use them almost every time I read
a story to the class.
If not, what other uses if any do you have for guided reading in the classroom?
N/A
If not, what other ways do you access students comprehension?
N/A
Recommendations

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Based on all of the research I have completed I have concluded that guided reading is an
effective strategy to help children improve their comprehension skills. I believe this because not
only did all of my articles support it but the teachers I interviewed also felt the same way. When
I first began my research, I believed that this was the case for young readers who were just
learning how to comprehend text. Through my research, I also found out that guided reading can
help any level reader to become more efficient at comprehending material. I was surprised to
hear that a seventh grade teacher used guided reading almost every time her students read. After
this teacher explained her reasoning behind using it, I could clearly see how this would be
extremely beneficial for her students.

References

Clidas, J. (n.d.). Guided reading with emergent readers. Bebop Books, 1-5. Retrieved from
https://www.leeandlow.com/images/pdfs/intro.pdf

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Deegan, L., & E., C. (n.d.). A case study of the impact of guided reading groups in Second Grade
on Comprehension Improvement. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED517734
Fountas, I., & Pinnell, G. (2012). Guided reading: 6 The Romance and the Reality.
Iaquinta, A. (2006). Guided reading: 9 A Research - Based Response to the Challenges of Early
Reading Instruction. Early Childhood Educational Journal, 33(6), 413-418.
Reutzel, D., Spichtig, A., & Petscher, Y. (2012). 5 Exploring the value added of a guided, silent
reading intervention: Effects on Struggling Third-Grade Readers' Achievement. The
Journal of Educational Research, 105, 404-415.
Walker, Amelia A. (2008) "Successful guided reading for third graders in a diverse and
academically challenged classroom," Language Arts Journal of Michigan: Vol. 24: Iss. 1,
Article 11.
What is guided reading? (n.d.). Retrieved November 20, 2014, from
http://www.scholastic.ca/clubs/images/whatisgrl.pdf