The Guided Reading Classroom: How to Keep ALL Students Working Constructively

The Guided Reading Classroom is a different kind of book on guided reading. It takes a bird's eye view of your literacy teaching, offering commonsense, useable answers to that persistent instructional question: What do you do with the rest of the class while you're leading a small group? Nancy Witherell helps ensure that the rest of your guided reading classroom engages in independent learning activities that support both students' growth in reading and your specific curriculum goals. Witherell offers a variety of ideas for organizing your reading instructional time to make the most of students' independent time, including minilessons that prepare students for individual work, during-reading activities that help them retain what they are learning, and after-reading follow-ups. But The Guided Reading Classroom goes well beyond managing instruction, offering a range of long-term projects and center-based independent activities that challenge students to work by themselves and to make consistent, thoughtful use of their developing reading abilities. Filled with organization tips, classroom scenarios, a sample weekly plan, and reproducible materials, The Guided Reading Classroom gives you an overview of dynamic classrooms in action and ways to increase your instructional effectiveness. With specific answers to teachers' most frequently asked questions, a practical, encouraging tone, and a flexible framework designed to work as effectively for teachers as it does with students, The Guided Reading Classroom is an ideal resource for every literacy teacher who does guided reading and wants to do it better.