Teaching Expertise

We all know it: reading lessons often sink into a rut, and it can be difficult to keep things interesting; even with a classroom full of proficient readers and a wide variety of texts. No matter how involved the lesson plans are, it’s important to bring something fresh to each reading session. This helps keep students and teachers engaged, and it can lead to longer-term retention and success in reading! If you feel like your guided reading routine could use a fresh take, here are thirteen of the best activities to really make your reading lessons pop!

1. Guided Reading Lesson Plans Outline

If you’re looking for a tried and true template for your guided reading sessions, look no further than this excellent resource! It is a complete guide that will help you plan and prepare for effective guided reading activities in the classroom. Plus, this model allows for flexibility and easy differentiation, which is great for teachers with students at different reading levels.

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2. Guided Reading Games for All Reading Levels

With this set of differentiable games, you can encourage kids to apply the reading strategies and skills that they’ve acquired through guided reading. There are games for individuals, small groups, and the whole class, which means you’ll be able to incorporate something from this list into several different lesson plans and learning contexts.

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3. Teacher’s Guidelines for Building Guided Reading Lessons

This resource is full of tips and practical advice for teachers who want to up their guided reading game. It’s also full of great “jumping off points” where teachers can take inspiration from the examples and then adapt and grow the ideas to suit their students’ learning needs.

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4. Guided Reading Weekly Reading Guide

Here is an activity that is geared towards individual reading time. This template offers guidance and prompts for students as they read at home or during quiet time at school. Students can work through the book and material on their own, and it is also a great accountability tool for reading-related homework.

Learn More: Teachers Pay Teachers

5. Independent Reading Time Log

For students who are keen to track their reading wherever they are, this reading log is the perfect organizational tool. It also brings in elements of guided reading with writing prompts and reflection questions that can help students make the most of their reading time and read at a much deeper level.

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6. Guided Reading “Fun Centers”

Do your reading stations always seem to be a bit too quiet and boring? Or maybe the same activities over and over again have become too predictable for your students? This resource features fun and engaging games to add to the mix, and they’ll actually help progress toward your guided reading learning goals, too!

Learn More: Life In First Grade

7. Alternative to Rotating Reading Stations

Sometimes, rotating reading stations are a big hassle. If you don’t want to spend precious class time on the messy transitions between stations, you should try this “must do/may do” approach. Students stay seated with their reading groups and work together to complete differentiated task cards, rather than moving around inefficiently.

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8. Guided Reading Must-Haves

This guided reading pack of printables is an easy way to incorporate several new guided reading activities directly into your classroom. It features flexible and customizable materials that you can adjust in line with the texts you’re teaching and the reading level of your students.

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9. Hands-On Activities for Guided Reading

This resource focuses on the development of systems that help optimize reading comprehension and even support a bit of writing in the meantime. Your students’ reading skills can benefit from the total physical response elicited by these games, and these ideas can make the reading process more fun and engaging. This can boost overall comprehension skills and activities in the classroom that only take a couple of minutes to prepare. 

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10. Guided Reading Picture Ladders

This fun cut-and-paste activity looks at different reading strategies and graphic organizers to help students boost their reading ability. Students organize each sentence strip according to its proper place in the story or text. It’s also an effective way to check individual levels of comprehension without using boring or repetitive comprehension questions. It’s perfect for the classroom setting or as a homework assignment. 

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11. Reading Management Binder

This resource is full of lesson plan templates and flexible activities that you can apply to new and familiar texts alike. It includes activities for students to complete as a whole class as well as individual student activities. There are also follow-up activities to help prepare effective intervention activities to make sure that everyone in your class is reading on grade level. 

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12. Reading-Inspired Classroom Decorations

Simply having these guided reading skills and strategies displayed throughout your classroom can be an effective reminder that makes a difference in student outcomes. From background knowledge to strategy use while reading, these decorations all bring primary students’ attention back to the reading skills that they’ve been learning. It’s a fun way to remember all that they know!

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13. Early Guided Reading Lesson Example

This is an example guided reading lesson with first-grade readers. It shows how even a class with limited time can make the most of different activities to boost the instructional level and make the guided reading points stick. You’ll notice how the instructor uses a variety of methods to complete the lesson; which methods will you incorporate into your own classroom? 

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