This is an important book for teachers, administrators, prospective teachers, college professors, or anyone seeking to provide quality teaching to children in their first years of schooling.
- Harvard Educational Review

Among the many changes to sweep American literacy education has been a move toward whole class instruction. Nonetheless, children still bring to literacy a wide range of experiences and competencies. How, then, might teachers best support a literate community yet still meet the needs of individual readers? For Fountas and Pinnell, the answer lies in guided reading, which allows children to develop as individual readers within the context of a small group. Their new book is the richest, most comprehensive guided reading resource available today and the first systematic offering of instructional support for guided reading adherents.

Guided Reading was written for K-3 classroom teachers, reading resource teachers, teacher educators, preservice teachers, researchers, administrators, and staff developers. Based on the authors' nine years of research and development, it explains how to create a balanced literacy program based on guided reading and supported by read aloud, shared reading, interactive writing, and other approaches. While there is an entire chapter devoted solely to the process by which children become literate, every chapter clearly presents the theoretical underpinnings of the practices it suggests. Also included are guidelines for:

Best of all, there are well over 2,500 leveled books in the Appendixes, along with many other reproducible resources that teachers will use for years to come.

"Good first teaching is the foundation of education and the right of every child," assert the authors. With the publication of this book, educators themselves will find the foundation in reading skills instruction they so rightly deserve.

Building on Early Literacy

Guided Reading Within a Balanced Literacy Program

Designing and Organizing the Learning Environment

Managing the Classroom

Using Assessment to Inform Teaching

Using Running Records

Dynamic Grouping

Creating a Text Gradient

Using a Leveled Set of Books

Selecting and Introducing Books

Teaching for Strategies

Learning About Letters and Words

Shifts Over Time

Good First Teaching with a Second Chance to Learn

Appendixes

:A. Keep Books Order Form

B. Work Board Icons

C. Alphabet Chart

D. Management of Guided ReadingTen-Day Plan

E. Guided Reading Record Version One

F. Guided Reading Record Version Two

G. Guided Reading Observations

H. Record of Book-Reading Progress Version One

Record of Book-Reading Progress Version Two

J. Making a Folder Letter Book

K. Evaluation Response for Text Gradient

L. Guided Reading Self-Assessment

M. Guided Reading Book List

N. Book Publishers/Distributors