Guided Reading

For this week's article on guided reading, I found the article Implementation of the Guided Reading Approach with Elementary School Deaf Students written by Barbara R. Schirmer and Laura Schaffer. The article summarized a study that took place that looked at the effectiveness of guided reading with deaf students. Many deaf classrooms have adopted the guided reading approach because the prior approaches like phonemic awareness was not increasing deaf students' reading skills. Guided reading benefits the classroom in multiple ways. It encourages students to participate in literacy activities, teaches how to read for different purposes, focuses on all the main areas of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension), provides students with plenty of time to read quality literature while in class, and includes many other benefits. The study conducted in the article took about thirty deaf students differing in age and grade and studied each student's reading progress over the course of two years with the guided reading approach. The study was separated into four steps of the guided reading method: selection of leveled books, introduction of the book, silent reading, and discussion. There was overall an improvement in the students' reading progress. The average deaf student has previously only gained one third of a grade equivalent change each school year. The students in this study had a modest gain compared to the average deaf student; however, it was still did not meet the goal of one year progress per each school year. In order to enhance the outcome of guided reading, the article suggested to pair the guided reading approach with extra programs such as an added summer program that gets both the kids and parents involved.