After reading the article "Modified Guided Reading: Gateway to English as a Second Language and Literacy Learning" written by Mary A. Avalos, Alina Plasencia, Celina Chavez, and Josefa Rascon I got a great insight of how greatly the benefits of guided reading impacts English-language learners as well as students who are working in small groups. The article defines guided reading as a component of a balanced literacy program providing differentiated, small-group reading instruction to four to six students with similar strengths and instructional needs or to heterogeneously grouped students. From my personal experience I believe that it is important to provide each group with a text that presents a challenge for the readers. I feel this way because I have seen students become bored within their groups because they do not feel challenged at all and the material they are reading is easy to them. If teachers provide the students with the appropriate text then all students should benefit from the guided-reading instructional model. This article touches on how guided reading can be modified for ELL students. To be honest, before reading this article I would have no clue how to help ELL students in my classroom during reading groups. From my experiences I have only seen ELL students sent out of the classroom to work with someone else during this time.
In order to determine if an ELL student is at their proper reading level the teacher should base this off of how the student is reading in their first language. This might seem unnecessary but it is important to know that the student at-least understands to concept behind reading. A great benefit for teachers when it comes to guided reading is that it provides a systematic, yet open-ended framework for evaluating students' needs while building upon the strengths students have already demonstrated. I feel like I will use guided reading in my classroom because it allows the students to collaborate together but at the same time they are practicing the skills they need to. My article goes on to discuss ways a teacher can plan for guided reading and some different activities that can be used for these lessons. I feel like this article is a great resource to use if a teacher has an ELL student in their classroom. Also, I found this article to be reliable of its content. The greatest aspect that the article provides is the charts. These are very informative and give validity to how effective guided reading can be!
Hey Katie! It looks like you found a very helpful article about guided reading. I think your article could be beneficial to a lot of teachers. The school I will be placed next year has a ELL population. We need to keep all of our students in mind when planning lessons because many of the lessons we plan are going to have to be modified to meet all of our students' needs. My article also provided charts, which I find to be very helpful in these types of articles! Great Blog!
ReplyDeleteKatie, sounds like a fabulous article. It is true ELL students get sent out of class a lot to work with specialists. I have seen teachers no longer take ownership for that child and feel like they don't have to plan instruction for that child anymore. I really like this article that you found because it shows the teachers still should be teaching these students! Even when they are leaving class to go with specialists.
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