Word Work During Guided Reading

Hey everyone. It’s Deirdre from Mrs. Garcia’s Super Scholars here today, and I am so excited to share how I incorporate targeted word work into my guided reading lessons.

Like Breanna mentioned last week, IF YOU DO NOT HAVE THIS BOOK YOU NEED TO GET ON THAT RIGHT NOW. This book is my GR bible.

In every single GR session, I use targeted word building geared towards that level. There are 3 tools I use for this.

Letter magnets. I have this awesome set from Lakeshore. I love that they are color-coded by consonants and vowels, and that they are easily organized and accessible. In the past I’ve also used letter tiles, wikki stix, and letter stickers, but I like how easily magnets move.

Magnetic whiteboards. I love these because they stack well without letters sticking to other boards, and I can write on them as well. Some of my kids need the support of Elkonin boxes, and I can quickly draw these on the board. I have used cookie sheets from the Dollar Tree as well, they work especially well if you're on budget! Having all the letters at the bottom also helps them practice ABC order as they put them back in place. After reading, we usually use the top of the board for writing dictated sentences.

Word Building Cards. Using Jan Richardson’s suggestions for each level, I’ve made word building cards to help me easily set up for my GR teams. I have the word card “ladders” on a ribbon for each level that I use while working with my groups, as well as a cheat sheet for which letters to grab out of my magnet box.  I usually have letters for both my groups for that day on the board so we can transition quickly.

Once my boards are set up, I can quickly start my GR groups. My team comes to my table and has a minute or two to build the sight words that are on my easel as I settle the rest of the class into stations. When I get to my table, I have them clear their workspace (top of the board) and we go through the word ladder for their level.

Word Work takes about 2 minutes, but it packs a huge punch! We have a large Scholastic guided reading library of book sets (PTL), and I will usually use a word card that has some words from that day's books. My kids are already acquainted to words before they start reading, and they have those word decoding strategies fresh in their mind before we start.

Here’s a quick snippet of what it looks like in action. This is an D-level group so they are pretty independent and need much less prompting than very beginning readers. Please excuse my awful voice! 

How do you incorporate word work into your GR lessons? I’d love to hear about it!