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Selecting Childrens Books for Guided Reading

When teaching children to read, it is imperative that we teach reading comprehension and how to make inferences from the reading. Selecting childrens books for the reading strategy known as guided reading requires that the books be slightly below the actual reading level of the child, so the focus is not as much on decoding what each of the words are as it is on understanding the overall meaning of what is being read. There are an abundance of childrens books that can be used in a guided reading curriculum.

Some childrens books that are recommended for learning to make inferences include Louis Sachar's book “Holes” and Phyllis Naylor's Newbery Award winning “Shiloh”, because of the authors’ attention to details. To make inferences, readers must learn to call upon prior knowledge and apply it to what they have read. Observing your student incorporating reading strategies during your guided reading sessions will help you determine the students’ strengths and what they still need to learn.

There are also childrens books that encourage visualization through the use of very detailed passages. Being able to visualize a scene described with words into images is a reading strategy that helps in overall reading comprehension. You can encourage your student to visualize with some effective guided reading techniques. Have your student close his or her eyes after reading a detailed scene, and describe what it looked like from memory. Another technique would be to have your student to draw the scene on paper, although you should encourage him or her to describe it orally first.