Feeling exhausted after guided reading? Are you working tirelessly while your students aren't even breaking a sweat? Do you ever wonder if other teachers feels the same way you do about guided reading--that it's not working the way you think it should? You are not alone. There seems to be much confusion surrounding guided reading--the term even means something different from school to school.
Now you can turn to the 50 years of collective experience of authors Jan Burkins and Melody Croft to prevent guided reading from going astray in your classroom. Jan and Melody present personal clarifications, adaptations, and supports that have helped them work through their own tricky parts as they guide readers. The book's six chapters each clarify a misunderstanding about guided reading instruction in the following areas:
- The teacher's role and the gradual release of responsibility
- Instructional reading level
- Text gradients
- Balanced instruction
- Integrated processing
- Assessment
With 27 strategies, you're sure to find the help you need to work through your own challenges as you guide groups of readers.
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Author Bio
Jan Miller Burkins is currently completing her sixth year as a full-time coach at Chase Street Elementary School, Athens, Georgia. She has worked as a language arts consultant for a regional educational service agency, a district-level literacy coordinator, a reading specialist, and an elementary classroom teacher. Her work as a consultant has taken her into elementary, middle, and high schools where she has helped school leaders examine their reading instruction, modeled lessons, and facilitated professional learning. In 1989, Burkins received her undergraduate degree in early childhood education from Birmingham-Southern College in Birmingham, Alabama, and in 1993 her master’s from the University of Alabama. She later earned her reading specialist certification and her doctorate from the University of Kansas in 1999. Her dissertation, which was a meta-analysis of the research on phonemic awareness, was the Dissertation of the Year for the University of Kansas School of Education and one of three finalists for the International Reading Association’s Dissertation of the Year.