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Volume 17, Number 5, May/June 1999 Guided ReadingGuided Reading and Writing
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 | After lunch we will join Ms. Donna's class for science class. Together we will do an experiment to learn more about beach erosion. We will be going to the science lab, so you will need to bring your science logs! | |
"[Fluent readers] search for links between the items and they relate new discoveries to old knowledge" (Clay, 1993). As students read this text, I may ask questions such as: Who does we, you, or your refer to?
Why is Ms. Donna capitalized? Occasionally, I ask questions about structural analysis: Why do you think there is an ed at the end of this word? What does ies mean?
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![[photo of the author in her classroom]](images/p-27.jpg) |
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| ABOVE: Teacher and students discuss the morning letter.
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When a student struggles with the meaning of the text, I ask: Which strategy can you use and why? The students generally choose the appropriate strategy, but are sometimes unable to get the meaning from the word. When this happens, I need to work with them to help them discover the meaning through the surrounding text.
Fluent readers are often able to derive the meaning of unfamiliar words from their knowledge of the supporting sentence. When one student did not recognize the word together, I asked: "What do you think it means to join Ms. Donna's class for science? What do you think join means?" As they began to assign meaning to the first sentence, I asked: "How does the word together relate to the first sentence?" At this point, the students were able to attach meaning to the word together.
Frequently students feel safe enough to make a guess about unfamiliar words. I always encourage this, reminding them that their guesses must make sense. When one student guessed experience for experiment, I noted that the student used graphic cues (the spelling of both words is similar) and the student's guess was semantically correct. "Good guess," I responded, writing both words on the paper. Next I asked how this word would relate to the rest of the sentence; I encouraged the students to explore the meaning of the rest of the sentence. I encouraged students to rely on their background knowledge from science class and asked what kinds of things we do in science. With this final supporting question, the student grasped the meaning and made the correct sign for experiment.
Other questions prompts generated by the morning letter include: "What kinds of things will we do later today?"; "You told me about the people, but what is the action word in this sentence?" Sometimes the unknown word is a verb. It can help students to be aware of the type of word-for example a noun, verb, or adjective-that they need to be thinking about.
Once a student has successfully applied a strategy, I often ask one of the most difficult questions, "How do you know that?" The purpose of such a question and the discussion that follows is to help students develop their metacognitive reading skills. This gives them the opportunity to learn not only how to read, but how reading is done. When students begin to describe how they figured out meaning from text, they have become empowered and confident readers.
—Stephanie Malik
