You CAN Take it with You! Crossing the Curriculum with Portable Strategies for Guided Reading

Every one of us recognizes the book introduction as a key aspect of the “before” reading component in guided reading.  Imagine you are introducing Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers to a group of 3^rd graders.  You activate their schema about Native Americans, tapping into their prior knowledge and making connections to their life experiences.  You frame it this way: “Tell me some things you know about Native Americans.”  Their responses vary, most are on point, a few surprises!  In other words, a typical beginning to your small-group lesson and one that starts your students on their journey of successful reading into the world of Native Americans. All is well, right?

These students most certainly are being set up for success in this reading, of this book, on this particular topic: Native Americans.

Could we be doing more for our students? Could we get more from these instructional minutes? I think so!  And the answer lies in portable strategies, focusing on strategic moves successful readers make whenever they read.

The shift is small.  In addition to the particular book and its theme or focus, what if we also considered the reading behaviors of successful readers at the strategy level? With this small shift in our thinking, changing our focus and language only slightly, we change the game significantly for our students.

Portable Strategies

Let’s keep our lesson and small group-text the same, Native Americans at the Time of the Explorers.  We recognize that good readers think about what they know about a topic before they begin to read a book.  With that consideration in mind, pinpointing a strategic behavior of successful readers, the book introduction to the same group of 3^rd grade students now includes this language: “Good readers first identify the topic of the book they’re about to read and think about what they already know about that topic.  So, I want you to practice this. Turn and tell the person sitting next to you something you know about the topic of this book, Native Americans.”

As you listen in, your immediate results are the same: most students giving ideas on point, a few surprises.  The key difference is that you have reinforced for students the portable nature of the strategy—so that whether you, as a student, are in Mrs. Boyle’s English class or Mr. Pedryc’s social studies class, or Ms. Graham’s science class, you carry the strategy with you.

So, the more we include strategy instruction, the better equipped our students will be to engage in strategic reading behaviors.

You CAN take it with you is our message to students into every class, for success across the curriculum!

More on Guided Reading:

• Guided Reading Activities & Small-Group Instruction Best Practices

Jennifer Boyle

National Literacy Consultant, Benchmark Education
Read Jennifer's Full Bio

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