"Leveled Books for Guided Reading"

The Challenge: Twenty percent of the 60 kindergarten students in Ms. Gould's class qualified as English language learners. She described her class as a "beautiful rainbow of colors." Her goal was to instill reading confidence and develop strategies that would have all of the children reading by year's end, yet keep the learning experience fun. She also wanted to work individually with the students at each of their reading levels. Another of her objectives was to ensure that as they progressed, her students would have appropriately leveled books to read every day.

The Solution: Ms. Gould introduced an innovative, guided reading program using leveled reading books. These books challenged each one of the students no matter where they fell within the standardized reading ability. For a period of 30-minutes a day, she was able to work individually with small groups of kindergartners at a variety of different reading levels and with a variety of books. This reading program, though challenging, was fun and alleviated some of the anxiety and frustration associated with other reading programs.

Accomplishments: All of the young students achieved kindergarten exiting standards, with most children exceeding these standards. There was a 15 to 20 percent improvement in reading abilities, which led to becoming independent readers sooner in the school year and surprisingly, students learned how to problem-solve much earlier than previous classes. Greatly encouraged by the guided reading outcome, Ms. Gould incorporated this reading program into her daily language block with all of her kindergarten students.