Have you listened to Bev Bain?

Well Guided Reading is code for Whole Language. This is a reading approach that uses strategies of guessing, contextual cues, sight words, and limited phonics to teach reading.

I think I speak for many in that that system is not effective with the vast majority of learning disabled (and even many normal) learners. The systems premise is that learnign reading is natural like speaking. This premise is false, in that reading is highly UNNATURAL and there is no reading center in the brain. The brain uses many parts of itself to put togehter the reading process.

I didn’t mean to say this all to jump on you! My point is that there are other approaches that are more effective.
Some worthwhile things to study up on are:
Phonographix and its various spin offs.
Jolly Phonics (young kids)
Explode the Code (and other effective phonetic approaches)
Orton Gillinagham and Orton based programs.

For kids without significant reading disabilities, I would suggest the first two. There are Orton based systems appropriate for regular learners.

—des

Thank you for replying, Des.

Our prinicipal is talking about using Guided Reading next year in all grades. I wanted to get everyone’s take on this workshop before I would sign up for it.

Any ideas of how to get the principal to look at other reading approaches?

Try hard to get the principal to realize what the *real* research-based methods are — and that the “research” of the presenters above is not of good quality.

The report of the National Reading Panel, “Teaching Children to Read”, covers the ground pretty thoroughly. You can get it from this site on the LD In Depth page (It applies to *all* readers and only as a subset to LD’s).

Then the difficulty is getting people to actually read it (it is not too surprising when you think about it, that many of the people promoting ineffective reading teaching are not enthusiastic about reading for themselves).
You could try getting yourself on the agenda for a staff meeting, make overheads of the main points of the NRP report, hand out copies, and present it with the best sales job you can.
I mean this seriously.

I work as an SLP with mostly middle and high school students. I spend a lot of time teaching reading whenever I can and I have learned so much from lurking on this board!

Before I knew that “guided reading” was code for whole language, I sometimes used the term on IEPs to refer to oral reading with feedback. In other words, having the student read out loud while I prompt him to apply knowledge of phonetetic patterns, morphology, etc., provide support as he decodes multisyllable words, model intonation and so on….basically “guiding” him and working on automaticity and fluency in a manner similar to the one that Victoria has described in many of her posts. Is there another term besides “guided reading” that would be better to use to differentiate the two? Or do you always have to explain it in detail anyway to parents and teachers in order to avoid confusion?

Thanks!
Miriam

Well, even the NRP uses the phrase “guided oral reading”. The key words are “guided *oral* reading WITH systematic synthetic phonics and teaching self-correction”.