Guided Reading: Example Lesson Plan for Early Reader

Student: Kurtis (grade 6)

Abilities: Kurtis is an emergent reader with some characteristics of an early reader. His instructional level is Pre-Primer, reading at a Fountas & Pinnell Level C. He identifies consonant names and sounds; attends to initial consonant sounds; attempts to use graphophonic cues and strategies to solve unknown words; uses pictures to solve unknown words; good background knowledge for many topics (special interest in nature/animals); makes connections to personal experience; can make predictions, prior to reading, with little support (Look at the title and cover, what do you think that the story will be about? ); reads left to right, tracks print with his finger while reading text with 1 line of print; and recognizes about 40 high frequency words.

Priorities: Some of Kurtis' priorities at this time include: increase fluency (reading rate, phrasing, attending to punctuation, intonation/expression); automatic use of multiple strategies for solving unknown words; self monitor for meaning throughout reading; use letter-sound relationships to solve words (attempts this, but is not accurate with letter sounds); recognize high frequency words; track print on pages containing more than one line of text; and match one spoken word to one written word in text.

Today's Objectives:

Kurtis will read a familiar, independent level book, matching one spoken word to one written word.
Kurtis will demonstrate fluency (reading rate and attending to punctuation) with high teacher support when reading whole text.
Kurtis will demonstrate that he can track print on pages with multiple lines of print and varying print/picture layouts with high teacher support.
Kurtis will utilize multiple cuing systems (semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic) to attempt to solve unknown words in text with high teacher support.

Familiar Reading (3-5 minutes):

Kurtis will choose one of three familiar texts from previous lessons.
I will prompt Kurtis to select a book to read to "warm up" his brain. (He has told me that he is tired or his brain is too full of math or social studies from school. Kurtis and I have talked about the need to "warm up" our bodies when playing sports and he agreed that his brain needs to "warm up" too.)
I will prompt Kurtis to read the whole book to me, on his own, making sure that he takes his time and reads every word on the page. If he misses any words or lines of text I will prompt him to reread the page and make sure that he reads every word.
I will prompt Kurtis to re-read the book silently, taking his time to read every word on every page.

Word Work: (10 minutes)

- General Principle: Hearing and identifying short vowel sounds in words and the letters that represent them. (letters "a" and "o")
- Specific Principle for this lesson: In some words "a" can say /a/ like apple or can. In some words "o" can say /o/ like octopus or hot.

I will say a word. You spell it with your letters. You need to decide if the sound in the middle is "a" like can or "o" like hot (point to the words on top of the "T" chart on the white board while saying this).
Watch while I try some examples. The word is mat. I will repeat the word, mat. I will take the magnetic letters and spell m-a-t (lay out the letters as I state them). This word has an /a/ like can so I will write it on the chart under a/ can. (There will be a "T" chart drawn on the white board.)
I will try one more example. The word is cot. I will repeat the word, cot. I will take the magnetic letters and spell c-o-t (lay out the letters as I state them). This word has an /o/ like hot so I will write it on the chart under o/ hot.
I will dictate the following words to Kurtis: top, sat, man, mop, tap, stop. He will make each word with magnetic letters and indicate if it has the /a/ or /o/ sound. I will write the word under the correct column as indicated by Kurtis.
I will give Kurtis the opportunity to add one word of his own to each column by saying the word and spelling it with the magnetic letters.
At the end of this exercise, Kurtis will read the words under "can" and then the words under "hot."
I will restate the principle: In some words "a" can say /a/ like apple or can. In some words "o" can say /o/ like octopus or hot. Now we know more about vowel sounds.

Guided Reading:
Today's new book: "Willie's Wonderful Pet" by, Mel Cebulash F&P Level: C
Pre-Reading (5 minutes):
Book Introduction:

Today we are going to read a story by Mel Cebulash. The story is called, "Willie's Wonderful Pet." I will point to each word as I read it. I will then ask Kurtis to do the same. I will ask Kurtis to look at the cover of the book and predict what he thinks Willie's pet will be and why it is "wonderful."
I will ask Kurtis to think of a favorite pet that he has or had. (I will stress that he has to think of just one because Kurtis loves to talk about pets and this could become a lengthy conversation.) I will ask Kurtis to think of one word to describe his pet. If Kurtis has trouble with this I will remind him that Willie's pet is "wonderful" or I have a "playful" cat. I will explain why I describe my cat as playful.
Turn to page 3: Look at the top line on this page and tell me who the characters are in the pictures. (Willie and Wendy appear on the top line.)
Turn to page 4: I will model reading page 4. After reading I will point to the quotation marks and ask Kurtis what they are called and why they are used. (quotation marks/talking marks - to show the words that people actually say) Ask Kurtis what pet Willie will be taking to school for Pet Day. (a worm that he finds at the park) Prompt Kurtis to read the page as I modeled.
Turn to page 6: Willie went to the park and got a pet worm with Wendy. Look at the pictures. Does it look like Wendy likes worms? Why? (no, she holds her hands up to cover her face when Willie holds a worm up to her)
Turn to page 9: What kind of pet does Al have? (a dog)
Turn to page 10: Who has a cat? (Cathy) Who has a rabbit? (Henry)
Turn to page 12: What kind of pet does George have? (a goldfish) Ask Kurtis to point to the word goldfish. Ask him what two words he sees in goldfish. (gold, fish) Ask him to point to the name Rita on page 13.
Turn to page 20: Ask Kurtis to describe the picture on this page. (the animals are all just laying there) Ask Kurtis to predict why the animals are laying down.
Look at page 21. Find the word crawled. After Kurtis points to the word ask him if he can find it again.

Focused Strategy Minilesson (3-5 minutes):

Today we are reading "Willie's Wonderful Pet." You will be able to read most of this book, but I want to talk about what you could do if you come to a tough word. (look at pictures and sound it out - Kurtis's typical responses)
Today I want to show you another strategy that you can use along with looking at the pictures and sounding out each letter. Another thing I sometimes do is "look for a part of the word that I know." Listen while I read. If I find a tough word I will talk about how I solve the word. Usually I do this in my head.
Page 20: But Rita's bird wouldn't sing. And the other pets wouldn't do ________________. (anything) Then Willie said, "I know! My worm can crawl!"
I don't know that word (point to anything). It looks like a long word so maybe I know parts of the word and I can figure it out. I see that it ends in /ing/. I will look at some of the letters before the "ing" to see if I can figure out any other sounds. I will cover up part of the word (any) and try to sound out more of it. I see "th" and that says /th/. /Th/ and /ing/ says /thing/.
Now I will try the rest of the word. (uncover the any) "A" says /a/. /A/ ../thing/. But Rita's bird wouldn't sing. And the other pets wouldn't do /a/ /thing/ - /an/ /thing/.
I'm sure that the end of the word says /thing/ so I will cover that up to see if I can figure out the beginning sounds. I think that the beginning sounds say /any/ but I'm not sure so I will put the whole word together and read it in the sentence. But Rita's bird wouldn't sing. And the other pets wouldn't do anything.
Anything sounds right, looks right, and makes sense so that must be it.
When I came to a long word that I did not know "I looked for parts that I knew and used them to solve the word instead of sounding out each letter." After I solved the word I read the sentence again to make sure that it looked right, sounded right, and made sense.

During Reading (15-20 minutes):

As Kurtis reads I will listen for fluency (attention to punctuation and reading rate). I will provide explicit support to prompt Kurtis to monitor his reading rate because he tends to hurry and omit or misread words. I will also provide coaching to read with attention to punctuation as he tends to hesitate at the end of lines, not sentences, and ignores commas. (Put your words together so it sounds like talking.) I will provide reminders to slow down if he attempts to go too fast, and I will instruct him to return to the end of the last line read, when he has skipped a line of print. ("You missed a line, try again starting here ‘point to the end of the line where the problem occurred'.") (Were there enough words? I like the way you pointed under each word.) (What punctuation was at the end of the sentence? Listen to how I read this page; did you hear a pause at the end of each sentence? Was that the end of the sentence or the end of the line? Practice fluent reading through "echo reading" to read at a steady rate and read every word on the page.)
If Kurtis gets stuck on a word I will prompt him to look at the letters in the word (if he attempts to sound the word out). He is inconsistent with this process as he is not able to identify all letter sounds accurately. I will prompt him to re-read the sentence and decide what would make sense, decide if the word looks right, and decide if the sentence sounds right - after he tries inserting a word in the sentence. (Let's read the sentence again and think about what would make sense there. Then, walk Kurtis through the process of skipping the word; going back and re-reading, and thinking about what makes sense. Allow Kurtis to decide if he solved the word by asking if it looks right, sounds right, and makes sense. Remind him to look for "known parts of the word".) (Do you see a part of the word that can help you solve it?)

Post-reading (5-10 minutes):

I will ask Kurtis to rate today's book (liked it - thumbs up; it was okay - thumbs sideways; did not like it - thumbs down) and ask "Why?"
I will provide Kurtis with a sentence starter (on a white board so that he can copy it into his folder/journal) to write about how the log changed throughout the story and encourage him to use the information that we just talked about, in his writing. If Kurtis has trouble spelling a word I will encourage him to stretch the word and listen for the sounds. If it is a difficult word I will provide it by writing on the white board.
Sentence starter - I have a pet that is ______________________. Prompt Kurtis to use one describing word to fill in the blank, then describe the pet in the following sentences.
I will encourage Kurtis to write at least 3 sentences, reading each one to me as he writes. When he completes the writing piece I will ask him to read the entire paragraph to me. If he has trouble writing 3 sentences, I will prompt him to recall what we talked about. (Revisit our opening conversation about a pet that he has/had and the word that he used to describe it.) If needed, I will remind Kurtis about punctuation and capitalization.

Printer-friendly version