Many uses for guided reading lessons

At first I was using guided reading lessons to help my son gain more reading practice and improve his comprehension skills. For the most part, fiction stories were the main focus. But I have found it works really well with the rest of our lessons, especially history (a subject my son seems to hate).

I have been using the new skills I've developed to help him grasp new terms, make sense of the new information he's getting, and come away from the lesson with much more knowledge.

Planning is important to a guided reading lesson

I have my son read the history section we are working on during the day while I'm at work (as sort of a primer). But before he's even read it, I go over it and look for new vocabulary words or other terms he may not know. I make sure I know the location of the part of the world we're discussing on the map beforehand, and I locate any videos or websites that will help add a little to the lesson. I plan a hands-on project ahead of time too.

An example using an upcoming history lesson

Right now in history we are going over the rise of civilizations, and the next lesson is about Egypt.

I know where Egypt is on the map so I don't have to worry about finding that ahead of time. The lesson also mentions the Mediterranean Sea and the Nile, and it mentions that Palestine and Syria were once under Egypt rule, so I'll make sure I know where all these are.

**By the way, if you have kids who love to color, Knowledge Quest Maps has great historical maps that will help a history lesson be much more interesting and memorable. There are literally hundreds to choose from and you are sure to find one to match your lesson. They are perfect for the project part of a guided reading lesson.**

Looking through the lesson I see the words pharaoh, chariot, fertile, shaduf, irrigation, surveying, hieroglyphics, hieratic, and scribes that may need some explanation. I'll create a vocabulary list that we can work on together. This is project number one. Because the word hieroglyphics is in there, we may try our hand at writing in this form later.

Of course the big project after reading the lesson will be to build our own pyramids because it's Egypt! I will locate some videos on the History Channel website about the pyramids and maybe look up something on the seven ancient wonders, of which the pyramids are the only ones left standing. I just found the Culture focus website that has lots of pictures that will be interesting to my son.

And that is the planning part.

The actual guided reading history lesson

When I get home from work (after he's read it once) we will go over the vocabulary words. Sometimes he surprises me and already knows what some of the terms mean (one of his video games is set in early civilization times and helps me out more than I would have thought). Then I'll have him read the lesson out loud to me. I'll stop him at times to look at the map or discuss certain events or the artwork on the page that goes with a certain passage.

In traditional guided reading lessons you are supposed to get kids to look at the clues in a book and predict the outcome of the story (for fiction) or tell you what they expect to learn (for nonfiction), but because I have Nick read the text once to himself before we begin the lesson it's not necessary for us to do that. Sometimes we do look at the next lesson (right after we've finished one) and discuss it a little and I let that be the prediction part of the lesson.

The reason I have Nick read the lesson to himself ahead of time is to help him practice his reading skill. In the book Overcoming Dyslexia author Sally Shaywitz wrote that having a dyslexic child read the same passage a few times will help cement some of the words they read in their long-term memory. So I am making his history lesson dyslexia friendly.

After we've gone over the text, pictures (and their captions) and sidebars and seen some videos or did our research on the websites I locate ahead of time, then we will do our project. This is the fun part. This is what brings the lesson home and helps it all sink in. For the pyramids, I imagine we'll make them out of LEGOs because Nick loves building with LEGOs. But we could try modeling clay or the magnet toys we have. I can imagine that we'll try to build tunnels through our pyramids to replicate the real pyramids and talk about what they are for. I know that my son has a mummy LEGO character that he may want to put inside of his.

Other ideas for projects

As I mentioned before, we might try our hand at hieroglyphics or we might get a blackline map of Egypt and color in where the major pyramids are (after doing some research), the Nile and other important features of Egypt. Because I'm teaching him graphics programs right now, I could have him practice his skills on drawing a mummy, one of the many gods ancient Egyptians worshipped, the sphinx, or any number of Egyptian icons. Of course, in order to do that, we have to research them and this is where more learning comes in.

I'm only mentioning these ideas to give you examples of the possibilities. If you were to choose guided reading as a way to teach history or other subjects that are troubling your child, you should know that there are many possibilities to the project part to make the lessons fun and, therefore, more memorable (and less troubling).

Visit my other blog for in-depth details and information on creating outstanding guided reading lesson plans.

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The book I use for my son's history lessons is The Complete Book of World History. I love this series of workbooks because it makes teaching a lot of subjects fun for the kids. The World History book has each lesson on a two-page spread so the lessons are like bite-sized little chunks. The U.S. History book from the same series wasn't quite so bite-sized but did have the projects already planned out for you in the "Show What You Know" sections. For the most part, planning a lesson and the project is easier on us teachers.