New Guided Reading Groups

How do you organize your guided reading at your school?

Is each teacher by his or herself trying to get to every student every day who is working at Frustration Level? 

Do you group students who are close to the same level together to minimize your groups?

Or do you group your students across the WHOLE school so that you only have 2-3 groups which you meet with every day so that EVERY student gets reading help 4-5 days a week?

Last year we were using the first model, where we did guided reading alone in our rooms.

This year our resource teacher and Literacy specialist were coming into our rooms to read with two groups twice a week, which helped get more students reached.

However, at our Pd early this week, we took the levels of every student in the school and put their names on chart paper under the level they are currently working on. Our Literacy teacher will take these lists this week and form our groups and starting next week we will using this new format. I'll let you know how it goes.

I think I'm going to like it! For one hour every day, I'll have 3 groups of students working at a pre-reading level to get them ready to start guided reading which they'll hopefully be ready for by Christmas!