Reading+Guides

Reading Guides

One of the things that Nancie Atwell and other reading/writing workshop teachers do so well is to take what actual adults do and bring that in the classroom. Actual adult authors write meaningful things for a variety of audiences. Well, actual adult readers join book clubs and book clubs use reading guides. So, if you are going to use a reading guide, a good way to do this would be to look at the reading guides adult book clubs use and create yours along those lines. The reason for doing this is that adults actually choose to be part of a club, so if a club is boring, then the adult is going to quit. Kids don't get that choice in that by law they have to be in school. But we want to have kids choose literacy and to do so, we need to make our literacy club as enticing as an adult book club can be.

Here is a source for reading guides that adult book clubs use: http://www.readinggroupguides.com/content/index.asp The interesting thing is that you can find already existing book guides for kids on the web. You should feel free to adapt them to the needs of your own students. __[|http://www.williamsteig.com/guides.htm]__ [|http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/HarperChildrens/Teachers/TeachingResources.aspx]   [|http://www.readingrockets.org/guides/] Not only is it a good idea to use reading guides for fiction, to help "sell" the book for kids and to scaffold comprehension, but it is also a good idea to use reading guides when students read informational text. Kids have much less experience with informational texts and their structures, so a good reading guide can scaffold understanding.

Remember: reading is a form of virtual reality and we want to scaffold students so they have this virtual reality experience with texts. That means helping with the technicalities of reading (e.g., providing them with vocabulary words that they might have trouble with) and also helping with comprehension--if students need this help. We should also remove the scaffold as students develop independence with text. You might have all students reading a single text, some of whom would have one kind of reading guide, some of whom might have another type of reading guide, and some who might not use a reading guide. This is one way you individualize your approach.