Organizing Your Guided Reading Binder

An organized binder is a happy binder. Sounds silly, but tell me I'm wrong! When your materials are tidy and labeled, doesn't it give you a sense of satisfaction, that all is right with the world?

It's best to have your binder organized long before you work with your groups. Trying to throw it together after the fact is stressful, messy, and will cause you to miss some opportunities for noticing what your students' needs are.  

Here's how I organize my guided reading binder.

You'll need...

• Regular dividers
• Plastic pocket dividers (my favorite thing)
• A hole punch
• A 3" binder
• And rectangular post-its, if you want to use this strategy for grouping

First, I put in the plastic dividers. I have one for each group, and then I leave one or two for resource. These are the labels on my dividers:

*Group One

*Group Two

*Group Three

*Group Four

*Group Five

*Group Six (if needed)

*Data

*Planning Tools

On each group divider, I put post-its with the students' names who are in that group. I use post-its so it's easy to move kids from group to group.

In the pocket, I keep index cards with anecdotal notes about each student (more on that later). I also keep a copy of the book we're going to work on during the next lesson. For upper grades, this could be the same book over several days, because we might do a small section of text each day until we finish the book.

Behind each group tab, I put one regular divider for each student. That's where I keep the reading behavior records and Fiction/Nonfiction Quick Checks for each student. I also include their BOY & MOY assessment data for reference.

If a student changes groups, which they do frequently, I just take that whole stack of records and the divider tab and stick it behind the new group. I also change the student's post-it to the new group divider.

Behind the Data tab, I keep class data, such as the roster of all the student assessment data from BOY and MOY, and the Guided Reading Levels for each month. It's helpful to look across and notice who has made good progress and who isn't moving. You can also keep results of reading assessments here, because they can give you insight on what strategies you might use as minilessons in the future.

Behind the Planning Tools section, I place regular two dividers. Before the dividers, I add in any planning reference tools, such as MSV coding, questioning, strategies, etc., that help me plan my lessons. Behind the first regular divider, I add a stack of blank lesson plans so I always have a copy when I'm ready to plan. Behind the second regular divider, I add a stack of blank reading behavior records.

Stay tuned next week to read about getting your space ready!

Be sure to check back every Sunday for these informative posts. I promise you won't be disappointed. I included lots of information and tips to help you get rolling or to spice up your guided reading!   Getting to Know Your Readers First What Are the Other Kids Doing? Organizing Your Guided Reading Binder Preparing Your Space for Guided Reading Planning for Guided Reading How Do I Know What to Teach? Monitoring Progress in Guided Reading How to Build Reading Strategies Guided Reading: Make it Fun!

Grab the All-in-One Guided Reading Materials (over 100 pages of tools, forms, organizational strategies, and more for guided reading K-5).

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Guided Reading: What Are the Other Students Doing?

You're hard at work with a small group. Together, you're learning about the hibernation habits of bears. You're accessing background knowledge, synthesizing new learning, and making connections. The magic is happening! Students are engaged!

Suddenly, a student rises out of his seat. You see him from the corner of your eye. "Eddie," you think. "He knows better. I'm sure he won't come over here."

Like a shark, he slowly weaves around the desks. You attempt to make eye contact. "Sit down," your eyes say. "See three before me," they plead. Looming ever closer, he holds up the assignment he's working on and points. You shake your head from side to side. 

He moves to stand right behind the students you're working with. He holds up his paper and opens his mouth. You shake your head and gesture to his seat. He looks at you, uncomprehending.

You finally deign to open your mouth. "Sit down, Eddie," you say. "But I -" he starts. "Sit down, Eddie," you say again. "I am with a GROUP!" He looks at the kids at your table, confused, and decides it's in his interest to return to his seat. 

You look back at your group. What were you doing? Magic suspended. Womp-womp.

If this has happened to you, you're not alone. It's happened to all of us. The question is: will it keep happening? In order to maximize your guided reading time as well as the independent working time of your kids, rituals and routines are incredibly important! 

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

1. What do you want students to accomplish during this time?

I wanted students to practice strategic reading in a book of their choice, so I adopted the reader's workshop model with daily independent reading.

Students read independently and respond to their reading in reader's notebooks, practicing various strategies that we had learned. You can learn more about this in my Rolling Out Reader's Workshop unit on TPT.

Others answer this question differently. Some teachers use a Daily 5 approach, where students practice reading and writing at five different stations. Others use more traditional reading centers, where students rotate through reading and writing skills. Think about what you want students to invest in, and decide what's best for your kids!

2. What requisite skills will students need to be independent during this time?

For my independent reading example, students needed to be able to:

* Choose an appropriate book

* Sustain attention to their reading

* Practice a strategy while reading

* Know what to do when they finished reading a book

* Respond to their reading in their notebooks

I spend about 5-6 weeks at the beginning of the school year, before I start guided reading, building these skills a little bit at a time. This time is well spent, because it will support my readers in being independent while I'm working with a group. 

3. What management strategies do I need to implement to help students be independent?

I recommend charting out 4-6 expectations for students. Make them clear and framed positively. For example, rather than stating, "Don't get out of your seat," say, "Stay in your seat." 

This is what my chart looked like. You'll notice the last point is pretty important!

One of my basic expectations for this time frame was that students will not use this time to go to the restroom, sharpen pencils, or get a drink of water. They are strategically building their reading skills, so nothing else is more important. (Of course, I made agreements with individual students if they had a medical condition or an emergency situation.)

4. What routines will be in place to support students' independence?

How will you start the time of independence,  how will you structure the time, and ho will you end it smoothly, so you can move into the next part of your day? 

A couple of things that have worked for me:

Post the schedule! 
If you have your schedule posted, you are more likely to honor it, and your kids will keep you honest! You can learn more about building your guided reading schedule here.

Start consistently.
At the beginning of independent reading, we'd chant the expectations on the chart above together. I'd write the kind of response kids were expected to write on the board. While I was doing that, I'd ask students to pull out their independent reading books and their reader's notebooks with a pencil. They left those on the side of their desk, ready for when they were supposed to write their response.

Use an auditory signal.

I used a little bell. Once kids were reading independently, I'd verbally call over my first group by stating the name of the group. "Group Two," I'd say, once. Group Two knew they had to grab their materials and move to the table calmly.

At the end of their session, I'd send them back to their seats and call, once, "Group One." They'd come to the table calmly as well. When there were about ten minutes left in independent reading, I'd ring my little bell, and students knew it was time to respond in their notebooks. They had until I was done with the group to finish writing the response they had been taught to do.

Have a check-in at the end.

Whether this is a rubric where kids self-evaluate the way they spent their independent working time, or a signal that they flash to show that they've been working continuously, it's important to check in with the kids at the end of each session to show that you value their independent work.

I frequently used the Kagan Fist of Five. It was an easy check-in. If students had done an incredible job during independent reading and followed the expectations to a T, they held up all five fingers. If they did none of the items on the chart, they held up zero fingers. 1-4 was a range of how many items they had successfully done during independent reading.

One other easy guided reading tip: Have a signal that guided reading is in progress. Some people wear a hat (not too distracting, please!) or have a lamp that they turn on to show that guided reading is happening and the group is not to be bothered for any reason. Others set up a small stuffed animal in a designated spot.

Whatever you try, keep it consistent! If you put out the Guided Reading Bear, and Sammy walks up to the table to ask you a question, and you answer it, you've undermined yourself and the bear. Now the bear means nothing! Teach it, and then hold yourself and your kids accountable for it, and it will work!

Be sure to check back every Sunday for these informative posts. I promise you won't be disappointed. I included lots of information and tips to help you get rolling or to spice up your guided reading!   Getting to Know Your Readers First What Are the Other Kids Doing? Organizing Your Guided Reading Binder Preparing Your Space for Guided Reading Planning for Guided Reading How Do I Know What to Teach? Monitoring Progress in Guided Reading How to Build Reading Strategies Guided Reading: Make it Fun!    

Grab the All-in-One Guided Reading Materials (over 100 pages of tools, forms, organizational strategies, and more for guided reading K-5).

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Guided Reading: Getting to Know Your Readers First

Before you start a guided reading program, there are a few things you'll want to have set up in order to make the best use of your time and save your sanity!

One really important piece is to have your other students very well trained in being independent. They need to know what to do and how to do it. And most of all, they need to know not to bother you.

Later in the blog series (next, actually), I'll share some ideas about how to make this part of your guided reading program very effective!

The other really important piece is to get to know your students as readers before you attempt to guide them into any reading strategy acquisition. This means that you know their instructional reading level, yes, but it's almost more important to know what reading behaviors kids demonstrate as they read. 

For example, does your reader still reread every 3-4 words? Does your reader have great comprehension but poor decoding skills? Does your reader use the first two letters of a word and then guess at the rest? Does your reader choose random details and think that's the main idea of the whole reading? Those are all reading behaviors that kids have. 

The only way to grow your readers is to know how they think when they read, and how they problem-solve when they are stuck.

There are a few ways to do this. 

1. Use a reading assessment designed to help you identify students' instructional level and notice and document their reading behaviors. This could be something like DRA, iStation, or another commercial program. 

2. If you do not have access to an assessment kit (they can be pricey!), you can still get to know your readers! Here's what I would do. 

Go to Readworks and set up a free account. Click on "Find articles." Download one passage at each lexile level range. Download this too - it's a Lexile Level Correlation Chart and it'll help you figure out what reading levels students are on based on their lexile levels.

Download a running record form and a comprehension rubric. I actually have included one in my Guided Reading Freebie and my Rolling Out Guided Reading product on TPT. 

Call up one student and pull out a grade level passage (unless you have information or reason to think that this student is well above or well below grade level. Go with your instincts on grade level to start with!). 

Provide the student with the passage and take out one copy of your Reading Behavior Record. Have the student read to you and mark his/her errors on the record. For more information about how to score Reading Behavior Records, grab my Rolling Out Guided Reading product! 

The biggest thing to focus on during this time is the student's reading behaviors. Does the student...

- reread frequently?

- reread to correct a miscue?

- use appropriate decoding skills?

Make sure to complete the portion where the student retells the text so you can use the comprehension rubric to figure out what they are doing well and what they need to work on.

If the student is 95% and above in accuracy, and has a comprehension score of 10 or above, you can move up a level. If the student is below 90% in accuracy, and/or has a comprehension score below 7, it's a good idea to move down a level.

Once you've identified all of your students' levels, it's time to group them! I take a piece of paper and divide it into six or eight squares. I label each square with a level and start adding students' names to the boxes. 

Then I can combine squares into a group if I need to. I'd recommend between 3-5 students in each group. You can do 6 if it's needed for your kids or class, of course, but ideally, it'll be fewer than 5. 

These groups are not set in stone. You can adjust them at any time, in order to have kids work with other students on similar strategies, or if a student changes level before other students in his/her group do. 

Once your students are grouped, it's time to schedule!

Decide how many sessions of guided reading you're going to have each day. 

Schedule your needier groups more frequently. A group far below grade level might need to work with you every day. Groups who are above grade level may do well with just one session a week. 

Prepare your schedule - write it down! That's the way we make things real and hold ourselves accountable. You can always change it if you decide you need to!

I recommend posting the schedule on the wall so you can easily build the expectation with students that you'll meet with them regularly.

Check out the post next week to learn about what the rest of your class is doing while you're working with guided reading groups!

Be sure to check back every Sunday for these informative posts. I promise you won't be disappointed. I included lots of information and tips to help you get rolling or to spice up your guided reading!   Getting to Know Your Readers First What Are the Other Kids Doing? Organizing Your Guided Reading Binder Preparing Your Space for Guided Reading Planning for Guided Reading How Do I Know What to Teach? Monitoring Progress in Guided Reading How to Build Reading Strategies Guided Reading: Make it Fun!

  Grab the All-in-One Guided Reading Materials (over 100 pages of tools, forms, organizational strategies, and more for guided reading K-5).

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Guided Reading Miniseries

I'm going to say two words. I want you to listen to them and think about your honest reaction. 

Guided reading.

Ok, what happened? How did you feel? Calm? Nervous? Frustrated? Agreeable?

If you're already using guided reading as a regular practice in your classroom, great! This series will help you continue to try out new things to grow your readers! If you're not, then you're in the exact right spot. This series will help you get started with confidence!

  Be sure to check back every Sunday for these informative posts. I promise you won't be disappointed. I included lots of information and tips to help you get rolling or to spice up your guided reading!   September 24: Getting to Know Your Readers First October 1: What Are the Other Kids Doing? October 8: Organizing Your Guided Reading Binder October 15: Preparing Your Space for Guided Reading October 22: Planning for Guided Reading October 29: How Do I Know What to Teach? November 7: Monitoring Progress in Guided Reading November 12: How to Build Reading Strategies November 19: Guided Reading: Make it Fun!  

  Grab the All-in-One Guided Reading Materials (over 100 pages of tools, forms, organizational strategies, and more for guided reading K-5)!

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Teaching Word Work in Guided Reading

As an upper grades teacher, there were a few times in my career that I wanted to cry. One of these times was when I worked with fourth grade students who lacked basic decoding skills in a very serious way. I remember trying to figure out how to address their needs when they were the only kids in my class who needed it.

At that point, I added a short word work component to my guided reading lesson every day. Using the strategies below, I worked on decoding skills with the kids who needed them the most.

 

Adding Strategies to Students' Toolboxes During Guided Reading

Our goal for decoding instruction is that students will decode words accurately without our support. It's instinctive (and helpful, at first) to prompt students through unknown words. But, if every time they encounter a word they don't know, we prompt them on how to figure it out, they may be waiting for us to tell them what to do!

I know, they're sneaky.

So what we want to do is build their toolbox by adding strategies one at a time. This is the sequence I follow to introduce and develop decoding strategies during guided reading.

1. I choose a strategy students don't seem to have yet for decoding words. This could be reading words that follow a pattern. In this example, it's words that end in -ould.

2. I choose a book that includes opportunities for students to practice that pattern.

3. I explicitly teach using the strategy before I introduce the book. I name the strategy, explain it, and we practice using the strategy with a few words.

4. I write it on a mini-sentence strip and put it on the middle of the table, in front of students. They begin reading. As they get to an opportunity to practice the strategy that I just taught them, I wait to see if they will use it. If they don't, I ask, "What strategy can you use to read that word?" They usually stare for a second, and then point to the strategy. I read it out loud and say, "Now try it." If they need reteaching, I do that right away. Then they try it and we move on.

5. After a few lessons, when students seem to be able to use the strategy well, I put the mini sentence-strip in a little pocket chart behind the guided reading table. As students encounter words in future guided reading lessons, if they don't seem to know where to go, I ask them," Which strategy will you use?" They can choose the appropriate one from the chart.

 

This method has served to build independence in my readers! I hope it helps you, too!

Below are four different strategies to teach about decoding.

Word Families or Pattern Words

Students should be able to read words that follow patterns or are part of word families. To help students identify these quickly, choose a word family that pops up in your guided reading book a lot (ideally one that students need to practice because they don't read it accurately). Brainstorm words with different onsets and the same word family. As students read, have them hunt for that word family throughout the book.

 

Sight Word & High Frequency Word Automaticity

Sight words don't follow decodable patterns. The rules might not work. High-frequency words are words that pop up in reading frequently. They need to be instantly recognized as well.

To help students identify them immediately, write sight words on index cards and hole-punch them. Put them on a binder ring. Students can practice the rules every time they arrive in your guided reading group, for a minute or two to build their automaticity.

Using different vowel sounds

Our most struggling readers often use the same vowel sounds every time. Whenever they see an "a", the word is "cap" whether it ends with an "e" or not! Teaching students that vowels make different sounds in different words is important.

In this example, we worked on the vowel teams - ow as in plow and ow as in snow. We sorted words on cards based on the sound and built a list of words for each vowel sound. I chose a book carefully for guided reading that included those vowel sounds so students could practice immediately.

 

Recognizing Academic Language in Text

When students read content area texts, like science, social studies, or math, they encounter a lot of content area vocabulary! To help get their brains ready to identify those content area words, before we read that kind of text, we do a little word prediction map.

In the middle, I put the topic we expect to read about in that book (we predict the topic based on title & features before we read). Then we brainstorm all the words and phrases we might see in the book as we read. It helps students get their brains focused on the associated vocabulary and they are more likely to identify it if we've verbally discussed it and they've seen it in writing beforehand.

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Making Inferences: Scaffolding the Strategy Whole-Class and Small Group *Freebie!

Making inferences is tough! It's is one of the more difficult things we ask kids to do. We model, model, model, but making an inference requires more than following some steps. It requires some sense of what is logical and how we use evidence and background knowledge. It's tricky! Especially for our struggling readers, making inferences requires multiple exposures with lots of scaffolding.  To help kids make inferences that are logical, I try to keep them very closely tied to the text.   This doesn't mean that I don't value their background knowledge - background knowledge is so important to reading deeply! It just means that sometimes, students don't use background knowledge to understand text evidence; they use background knowledge to replace text evidence. And that's not good reading.   So I teach kids to use background knowledge to understand the evidence the text has provided. This means we have to start with the evidence!   

 Whole-Class Scaffolding

 This is a lesson we did with our second grade students. We were focusing on making inferences about a character. Specifically, we were working with A Bad Case of Stripes.

There is a lot of evidence about Camilla Cream's character in A Bad Case of Stripes. We wanted our kids to learn how to focus on searching for evidence to support their inferences. 

First, we started with introducing the strategy and what our purpose for reading was. The questions were charted on the left side of the chart before the teacher began reading the book. The teacher read the first question before starting the book to help focus the kids' thinking.

As the teacher read the book aloud, the kids listened for evidence that would help them specifically respond to the question. As they found evidence to respond to the question, it was charted on the right side. They used the specific details to make an inference and respond to the question. The answer was charted under the question on the left. 

Once the first question was answered, the teacher charted the second question to set a purpose for reading the next piece of text. The process continued throughout the book to help kids think about Camilla's character at different points in the story.

Small Group Scaffolding

 Sometimes what we do for the whole group doesn't "click" with some kids. They try to understand, but the learning is elusive. Small groups are a great time to differentiate your instruction and provide some scaffolding for students to learn a concept in a more structured way.

This is a tool I've used with small groups to help scaffold their inference-making skills. I chose a text very carefully that had several opportunities for students to make inferences. This can be challenging when you're working with a group of struggling readers. It's tough to find a text they can navigate at an instructional level and still have opportunities to "read between the lines" because the text is often so straightforward. Maybe this is easier for others than it is for me, but to ensure that my lesson is as accurate as possible, I really have to do some thinking! 

I chose a leveled reader from our supplemental materials after several re-reads. I found a few places in the text where I could make an inference. I made a two-columned table and and recorded the text evidence in order on the left side, in the order it appeared in the text. On a separate page, I made a blank some blank boxes and typed in the inferences I was able to make using the evidence. These I typed up out of order.

As students read the text, we hunted for the text evidence. Once they found it in the text, we read around it and thought about what we could "tell" from the evidence. Then we looked at the answer choices - the four inference statements that I typed up on the cards - and decided which one accurately matched the evidence. I had students circle a few words that helped them understand the inference was supported by the evidence. 

These are the questions I asked to guide their thinking:

What does the evidence mean?

From the evidence, which inference can we say is true? 

Which inference is supported by the piece of evidence?

Do the inference and evidence have similar meanings?

These questions helped focus the kids' thinking and made sure they were being logical in their evidence-inference connection.

Supporting inferences with evidence

I did a similar activity to work on the reverse of the evidence-inference process. I provided the inferences on the table, and the kids had to match the text evidence to explain which sentence from the text best supported the evidence. We read the article first and discussed important ideas. Then we read the evidence on the cards and sequenced them to locate the context of the evidence in the text. 

Then we read our inferences on the right side of the column and tried to logically connect the evidence to the inferences on the chart, making decisions about which piece of evidence helped us prove the inference true.

It was more challenging than moving from evidence to inferences, and required more time the first time I taught the lesson. But these scaffolding strategies helped our kids become more deliberate in their inference-making and inference-justifying. I used them with kids in grades three and four; special education students and general education students, too! 

What do you do to support kids' inference-making?

 Here's a handy dandy FREEBIE to help you scaffold your inference instruction!

And get all my Reading Strategy MiniPacks in the BIG BUNDLE!

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Reader's Workshop MiniSeries: Episode Seven: Guided Reading* Freebie!

This is the last installment of my Reader's Workshop miniseries. Make sure you click over to my Reader's Workshop giveaway before you go - there are still a few days to enter! 

Guided Reading is frequently not part of an upper elementary reading program. I know many people do (and I would enjoy doing as well) literature circles or other small group reading activities. And with my highest group, above grade level, I do often use a literature circle or study format. However, many kids (I feel) need more explicit instruction in how to use the decoding and comprehension skills that have thus far eluded them. Guided Reading is an opportunity for this to happen.

Here are some tools & tips that might help you get your space started this year!

Space for Guided Reading

This is my guided reading area. I know I could do guided reading at the students' desks, in a group, or even on the carpet. But I find that, by having a dedicated space, I am more consistent with guided reading. If I'm making a space as I go, it'll happen when it happens. In addition to this, if it's important to you, make a space for it! That's the first step toward making it happen.

It also helps me be prepared: I have a special space and a special time for this crucial piece of reading instruction with all my tools here.

Keep their tools handy
I believe in keeping tools handy for kids. We're putting them in text that is a little more difficult than what they could do on their own. To help them learn to struggle and help themselves, I encourage them to use their tools. These are the tools I keep on the wall behind the table: A blends chart,  a vowel teams chart, a vowel-syllable types chart, and decoding strategies in a pocket chart

It's not pretty, but it serves its purpose! 

You can get the blends chart from Carl's Corner.

Also kept handy on the wall is the word wall of high-frequency words.

On the table, I keep Guided Reading Tools Folders. These are laminated folders with smaller versions of the above tools, accessible to kids in an easy way. Each student uses these to review the word patterns before guided reading by pointing to each one and verbalizing the letters and sounds.

Keep your tools handy

Behind my table, I have a bookshelf and a rolling cart full of tools for guided reading. It's the only way I'm prepared for teaching my lessons consistently!

On the bookshelf, I keep a storage drawer thing with stickers, white-out, erasers, etc. Each drawer is labeled so I know what's going on inside. In the basket to the right of the drawers are the student tool folders and dry-erase boards. In the vertical magazine holders, I keep the materials necessary for each group. This includes the upcoming lesson plan, running record form, and the books for the lesson.

The middle shelf has a hanging file divider that I use to keep track of documentation. Also on the middle shelf are basic tools like stapler, hole puncher, and tape dispenser. Reward pencils and erasers are there too.

The bottom shelf has two baskets. Each basket has materials for word work. In the left are word patterns such as blends and vowel team centers and in the right are sight word building activities.

On top of the rolling cart (which has many other shelves full of index cards, sentence strips, and magnetic letters & cookie sheets) is my carry-all for guided reading. It's easy to organize with smaller cups. I keep dry-erase markers, post-its, regular markers, highlighters, and my special guided reading pencils. 

Special guided reading pencils? YES! I figured this one out a few years ago. I purchase a ton of colorful pencils. These happen to have bees on them (of course). I buy a bunch of the same kind so I can replenish as we wear them down. 
This is why: I don't want to waste time with kids bringing their own pencil to the table, forgetting it, it's unsharpened, it breaks, it turns out it's not their pencil at all, etc.
I got sick of it and realized every minute counts. So, in order to help things roll seamlessly, I kept the guided reading pencils at the table. Kids come to the table, borrow a pencil for the time they spend at the table, and then leave it there when they go back to their seats. The best part is that, since my G.R. pencils are special and all the same, I can tell if one of the naughties stole one! And I can make them put it back.

Document and organize

I keep my documents organized in my Guided Reading binder.

To find out how I organize my binder and plan lessons, visit this post!

To help you get your Guided Reading ready & rolling, here's a freebie pack full of materials for Guided Reading! Grab it at TPT!

Check out the other "episodes" in the Reader's Workshop MiniSeries:

August 3: Scheduling Your Day! How to spend your time in Reader's Workshop

August 6: Classroom Libraries

August 8: Read Alouds

August 10: Shared Reading

August 13: Independent Reading & Reading Responses

August 15: Word Study

August 17: Guided Reading

And for my complete Rolling Out Guided Reading Pack, visit my TPT Store!

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