Learning & Teaching

Guided Reading at St. Raphael's

All of our students from F-6 have been working diligently on their reading; expanding their decoding skills and of course understanding what they read. Teachers have been using the comprehensive and research-based Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Systems to determine students' independent and instructional reading levels.

Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessment Systems are designed to accurately and reliably identify each child’s instructional and independent reading levels and are tools to assist teachers interpret and use that data to plan meaningful guided reading lessons.

Guided reading is an instructional approach that involves a teacher working with a small group of students who demonstrate similar reading behaviors and can read similar levels of texts. The text is easy enough for students to read with the teachers skillful support; it offers challenges and opportunities for problem solving, but is easy enough for students to read with some fluency. Books are purposefully chosen that help students expand their strategies. In guided reading we focus on meaning but also use problem-solving strategies to figure out words students don't know. We deal with difficult sentence structure, and understand concepts or ideas about, within and beyond the texts.