[1] The small group model allows students to be taught in a way that is intended to be more focused on their specific needs, accelerating their progress.
Guided Reading is usually a daily activity in English and Welsh primary school classrooms and it involves every child in a class over the course of a week.
In South Africa, The Literacy Leadership Project were able to let four Foundation Phase teachers implement Guided Reading for students of the Aregorogeng Primary School.
According to Irene Fountas and Gay Su Pinnell, "some students will work on very basic reading skills such as word analysis and comprehending simple texts"[page needed] while other students may be working on more advanced reading skills and strategies with increasingly challenging texts.
[6] In addition, "all students need instructional support so they can expand their competence across a greater variety of increasingly challenging texts".
Simultaneously, "a teacher's goal is to strive to provide the most effective instruction possible and to match the difficulty of the material with the student's current abilities.
[7] Guided Reading is a complex approach and teachers are essential in the development and execution of a Balanced Literacy program.
Typically, a group will engage in a variety of pre-reading activities such as predicting, learning new vocabulary, and discussing various text features.
The students will engage in a conversation about the story, raise questions, build expectations, and notice information in the text.
The teacher makes observational notes about the strategy use by individual readers and may also take a short running record of the child's reading.
Prepare the children by providing support through reading the title, talking about the type of text, looking at the pictures and accessing previous knowledge.
The aim is to give them confidence without reading the book to them, If necessary, locate and preview difficult new words and unfamiliar concepts or names.
Encourage children to respond to the book either through a short discussion where they express opinions, or through providing follow-up activities.
Children can re-read texts to themselves or with a partner as an independent activity to give them opportunities to develop fluency and expression and build up reading miles.