Our Solutions to the Problems with Guided Reading. When I blogged about some resources Id made to brand the reading AFs, I promised a blog post about how and why my year group had abandoned the traditional method for teaching reading. The idea came from my wonderful year leader, Rhoda, so she has written this to share our reasons and method. If youd have asked me 1. I would have, without a doubt, talked. Guided Reading. I had always taught reading through this approach, it was. In fact, I was such an advocate that when I Ied English. Reading Activities For Middle SchoolI encouraged other colleagues to do the same. Ive now changed my mind. It was a conversation with a teacher at a Teach. Meet Sussex. meeting that got the cogs whirring. I heard him explain how his school had been. Guided Reading Sessions during Of. STED as it would be. Requires Improvement. If that is the. case, why is this still our chosen method of teaching These are my main issues with Guided Reading 1      The Independent Groups Problem. The nature of the Guided Reading approach means that. I find myself thinking up tasks which keep. All too often I see. I become a wasted resource sitting with six children in the. I dont think Im alone. In fact, this has been confirmed by OFSTED in. Reading for Pleasure and Purpose when they said that reading sessions. In some instances, pupils were left to. Although some enjoyed the. Too much focus on assessment, not on. I have sat through many meetings listening awestruck to. This is apparently useful for APP. Ive never found this to. I am drowning in post it notes while trying to decipher. Reading Follow Up Activities Ks2 Sat' title='Reading Follow Up Activities Ks2 Sat' />Our Solutions to the Problems with Guided Reading. A childs reading ability at the end of KS2 is assessed through a written. Resources Take a look at these. Suitable for guided and whole class reading activities. Updated 2016GR question promptsKS2 updated to include 2016 SAT style. I feel that too much of the group session is focussed. Group work is not focused enough. When observing teacher led groups in guided reading the. A daily photo to enhance your teaching with inspiring activities. Reading Primary Resources. Inspire Me packed full of reading comprehensions for key stage 2. Ks2 Sats English' title='Ks2 Sats English' />Assessment Focus AF, rather it. The group is also. Inevitably a good teacher would set high. But its hard. And maybe a 2. Written outcomes are required at KS2. A childs reading ability at the end of KS2 is assessed through. When I taught Year 6, I found it particularly hard to move my most able. Level 5 to Level 6 although they were able readers, they just. The difficult AFs need teaching. As children move through KS2, they are required to become. They are expected to have an awareness of authorial. I dont think we spend enough time actually teaching children to look. Rather, we skim over it with a couple of. Also, many sessions, even in upper KS2, have a heavy. AF1, i. e. teachers hear children decode rather than discuss other AFs with. It is interesting to note that AF1 stops being an assessment focus from. I think for too long children in my class have made progress. I was determined to. This is what we did 1       We moved to teaching whole class reading. Guided Reading. This statement often seems to be followed by sharp intake of. How does it work To which I reply, Just like. Instead of having a 3. We. choose an AF for the lesson, we plan activities which allow children to access. AF and we adapt the lesson as it goes along to allow all groups to make. It also allows me to work with the children that need it the most at. I can differentiate through many ways the difficulty of the text. I am asking them the level of. The outcome of the lesson is mostly written. This removes the problem of independent groups, it allows me. AF in depth and it better prepares children for the expectation. KS2. 2       This means we now have an extended focus on. Teaching whole class has allowed us to spend a greater. AF rather than skimming over them. Recently, a. reading lesson involved focussing in on a chapter of Charlottes Web. As a. class we looked at how the readers feelings changed towards Charlotte as the. We charted our feelings on line graphs we picked out. PEE response paragraph Point Evidence. Explanation all focussed on AF5. Now, I am not saying that couldnt be done in. Guided Reading session, but in this context, everyone could. I could ask challenging. I could support the lower ability. It just seemed to work better and in. We ensure weak readers still received AF1. AF1 decoding texts is vital if children are to become. APP grids at Level 4 It is the. For our children who are not confident decoders we have phonic support. It is important that. AF1 but this should not be at the detriment to the other. AFs otherwise we end up with children who can bark at print but have poor. We use branded Reading AFs. We wanted to make our children aware of the reading skills. I have tried this before when I taught Year 6. We have created a simple. AF and these are embedded in all our lessons they appear on. You can read more on this and see examples of our logos and download all the related resources here. We introduced reading warm ups. We now start off our Reading lessons with a Read with. R. I. C activity. This is where the children look at a stimulus it may be a. They have three questions to answer which. Retrieval, Interpret and Choice focus. You can see examples of these here. These short activities make children aware of the AFs. They. also allow lower ability children to access the different AF questions while. Hopefully as their AF1 skills improve. AF3 and AF5 when responding to. Its brought enjoyment back for teachers and children Finally, I like teaching reading again. I dont get sick of. I dont get annoyed with. Guided Reading carousel. Dahl group was away so cant do the follow up task Rowling. Jimmys forgotten his free choice. The. children look forward to reading sessions. We sometimes link our Guided Reading sessions to our Theme. This year. our class readers are all Movie Books. We dress up as one of the characters and. Theres a buzz about reading. 5Th Wheel Hitch Install Edmonton. I feel happy with where its going. And our progress data. SLT happy. Im not arguing that Guided Reading doesnt have a place in. I think that for children achieving up to a secure L3 it. AFs 1,2,3. My question is, is this. L4 When children move. Level 4 there is greater emphasis on a childs ability answer questions. AFs 4 7, finally being assessed through written responses at the. KS2. In fact even further along the line, KS3 colleagues nationally find. Year 7. Could this be due. AFs by the. end of KS2 Graph taken from How. Key Stages 2 and 3 Department for Education 2. Perhaps if we as primary colleagues armed our level 4 and 5. L3 onwards smoother for. To see the blog post which contains explanations and downloads of the branding now updated for the 2. National Curriculum, please click here opens in a new tab. To find out more about what these whole class lessons look like and how they have now be adopted across KS1 and 2, please click here opens in a new tab. To see all other blog posts about whole class reading lessons, click here.