Kindergarten Guided Reading: Anecdotal Records

Guided reading is my absolute favorite part of the day/teaching in general. I love having that small-group time with the kids, and I love the progress that they make during that time. I keep my groups small; I prefer to only have four students in each group, but I will have five if absolutely necessary. Although the beginning of the year when the students are STRUGGLING with just the basic parts of a book and reading can be very demanding, I am always overjoyed when they start moving up from level A to B and C and really start reading on their own.

Guided Reading Block
During the typical day in my classroom, I have about an hour for guided reading. I keep four student groups at all times based by ability, and I work with three groups each day. During this time, any support (ESL, etc) and my assistant pull students for intervention while I teach small groups. The other students work at literacy centers or stations. I will post more later about literacy centers and what else is going on in my room during guided reading.

Set-Up
I have a 'kidney' shaped guided reading table. I sit in the middle and the students are fanned out around me. Each spot has a marker board. At the top of each marker board is a small basket with a marker, sponge, and a cup of letters (if needed for spelling words). I keep their books under the marker board to hide them until needed. My students like to peek at the book when they sit down, but I always make them leave them under their board until we are ready for it.

Typical Lesson Format
A typical guided reading lesson starts out with a quick popcorn word review (only if needed) and a small,(like 1 minute) quick introduction of any tricky words. I might use this time to show them a contraction, a digraph, or other word chunk they need to be successful when reading. Sometimes I will have them write words on the marker board as a quick review/warm-up as well.

When everyone is ready, we activate prior knowledge and vocabulary by asking a QUICK question about the book. For example, if we were reading about going to the beach, I would ask them if they had ever been to the beach/what it was like/what you needed. Just something quick to activate their knowledge. With my ESL students, I may also use this time to pull out some picture flashcards & name them off.

We then read the title & discuss the cover. With my level C and higher students, we always discuss the title page and what information you can find there. We use Dibels/Reading 3D/M Class in my state and I know these questions come up eventually during their assessments :)

We take a quick picture walk. If there are any popcorn words that will be tricky, or new words, I call the word out & have them find it using letter/sound knowledge, and we point and read it together. During this time, I introduce or review the word attack strategy that I am teaching and I model it, and they practice it.  I do this as little as possible so that I am not "feeding" the book to them. I keep picture cards that reference the strategies sitting in front of me, and each student has a mini bookmark that also has the strategies. I constantly reference those strategies here. Here is a picture of the strategies and if you click the picture, it will take you to the blog of another teacher who created the strategy cards.

I also set a purpose for comprehension, such as, "At the end of this story, you have to be able to describe the setting & characters to me. Picturing the setting & characters in our head helps us understand the story and become better readers." I always set a clear word attack strategy/comprehension strategy so that they know exactly what I want them to do.

I always stop before the ending and have them predict the ending. Then I usually tell them to whisper-read
the story twice so that no one can hear them. When they are done reading, they may find and write all the popcorn words from their book or write sentences that connect to the book.With my Level D and E students, sometimes they do not read the whole book because they are so long. In that case, I will sticky note a stopping point in each book for their stopping/starting point.

Each student then begins reading independently. If I notice a student waiting and copying someone, I have them flip back a page and read from there. While they read by themselves, I read one-on-one and make notes using my anecdotal records. The records can be downloaded from my Teachers Pay Teachers store, found here.

Each level has their own sheet, and each sheet varies to match the needs of those reading levels. I check off what they can do and leave blank what they cannot do. This way, I can quickly tell what each student needs practice using. Please note that these records are used daily in my classroom and are based on what I have noticed as needed practice for each reading level. They are also based on training, professional development, and research.

The following books have also really helped me pick out what each level needs and how to meet those needs:

Finally, here are snippets of the actual anecdotal records and an explanation of each level. Remember to visit my Teachers Pay Teachers store for a full download of the document. 

Level A:

My level A students are almost always students who have not been exposed to a lot of reading outside of school. These students may have little to no idea of how to read a book. I have seen some students who don't even look at the words to read. But that is okay because reading is a learning process!

Here is an explanation of each item on the checklist:

Keeps eyes on the print-Literally looks at the text for the most part while they are reading. While they should be using picture clues to read, they should also realize that the words they are saying are somewhere on the page :)

Maintaining language pattern-if there is a sentence repeated throughout the entire book, they should be able to read all but one word that they have to use pictures clues to guess. An example of a repeated sentence might be "Look at my _____" or "I can see a _____."At this point, the students do not have to decode the word correctly that they use picture clues to decode because the majority of these students do not have a strong knowledge of letters/sounds. This will come later.

Using 1-to-1 correspondence-They point to each word & move their finger to new words as they read.

Using simple high frequency words-At this point, they may not recognize the words on their own. If there is a word in the repeated pattern that they continuously do not recognize, I take note of it. I also keep a list of popcorn words that each students knows/does not know right behind their anecdotal records in my guided reading notebook. This is handy for when I am picking out books to see what words I might need to teach.

Identifies front and back of book-I just want to know if they start reading at the beginning of the book or even if they read upside down. Many students do this at the beginning but it works itself out usually after a couple of weeks.

Level B:

Everything here remains the same as Level A, with the addition of a few items.

Using first letter of word and picture to decode/cross-check-For this word attack strategy, students come to a word they do not know. They look at the first letter or the word and make that letter sound then look at the picture to figure out what in that picture begins with that sound. This is sometimes called "get your mouth ready." If they can use this strategy at all, they get a check. If they can use the strategy to figure out the word, I circle the word "decode" to note that they can decode words this way. If they guess a word FIRST using just the picture, but they isolate the first sound & see if the letter there matches the sound they are making, I circle "cross-check."

For example: Decode-"Look at the bunny." Student looks at the word, isolates the b, makes the sound /b/ and looks at the picture and guesses bunny.
Cross-check-"Look at the bunny." Students looks at the picture and says "Look at the bunny." The student isolates the /b/ in bunny, then checks to see if there is an b at the beginning of the word.

Monitoring: rereading/self-correction-If a student is reading and makes a mistake, but does not fix it, they do not get a check. I check it only if they go back and change what they said (please note, sometimes I do not mark anything because there are no obvious mistakes to correct). If they realize they make a mistake, and go back to the beginning and read the whole sentence again, I circle "rereading." If they simply fix the word they messed up, then I circle "self-correction."

Level C:

Using return sweep from top-to-bottom/next page-Most level A/B books only have one line of text on each page. Level C books really begin to have two lines on each page. To check this off, the students must get to the end of the top line, and move down to the left side of the bottom line of text. I circle "top-to-bottom" if they can do that. They sometimes get confused when they go to the next page when there are two lines, so I just circle "next page" if they can start at the correct spot when they turn the page.

Using finger to track-Although I usually encourage students to continue pointing to each and every word, I know from teaching first grade that some students never lose that choppy, one word at a time reading that comes from taking the time to move their finger one by one. I encourage them to slide their finger as they read so that they have smooth reading. This is just encouraged at this level, and I really just want to know if they are able to track....if they are still using 1-to1 or if they are able to slide and track, I usually just note it at the bottom.

Tapping out & blending words-If they come to an unknown word, can the student sound out the letter sounds and blend the words? If they can only only tap out, I will usually circle that and mark through the word "blending." Then I know I need to work with that student on blending.

Attempts or reads with expression: I will circle "attempts" f they try most of the time to read an exclamatory or interrogative statement correctly. Most of the time, students at this level can still be pretty monotone. I will only circle "reads" if they do it every single time. I also circle the ending punctuation to note which types of sentence they read with expression.

Level D:

Using chunks to decode words-Students at this point usually begin to recognize smaller parts of words. For example, they might recognize the chunk "at" in the word "spat." A student using chunks would sound out the word this way: /s/ /p/ /at/. I usually note what chunk they used. Please know this is not something I always see at this level, but it's usually a strategy I begin to teach at this level. Common chunks also include the digraphs /sh/, /th/, and /ch/.

Using word endings-I also begin to really work with this level to notice s and ing at the end of words...ed typically comes later. I will not check them off unless they are making plural words plural. I will also circle the endings they read, just for my personal notes so that I can see what they know/see what they need to learn. 

Level E:

Skips words and asks what makes sense- The only way I can really explain this strategy is with an example. Whenever we read the book "The Three Little Pigs," we had previously read it as a read aloud. The students knew there was a wolf in the story who huffed and puffed and blew down the house. When we were reading, a student came to this part and was able to read most of it "The wolf huffed and puffed and blew the house down." He could not read the word "blew" or figure it out with his other strategies. So I covered it up with my finger and told him to skip it and think about what would make sense. He read it and guess blew, then cross-checked the word. This strategy is a little hit or miss at this level, but I like to try to teach it and use it with them when I can.

Reading dialogue with expression: If there is a speaking part in a story, I do not want the kids to read it like the other words! I encourage them to pretend they are the character and talk like them! This is particularly entertaining :) but it really helps them understand what is happening in the story and it helps me to know if they are understanding what is happening with the character.

Reading contractions: The typical contractions I see in level E books are "I'm" and "can't." If there is a contraction, we usually practice it. If they can read the ones in the book, I will check it and note what they read. If they cannot, I write down the contractions they did not recognize so that we can practice them later.

Thank you for reading my post :) I hope you can find these anecdotal records as valuable as I do! If you have any feedback, concerns, or questions feel free to comment below or ask in my Teachers Pay Teachers store!

And just in case you missed it, here is a link to the full set of documents.