Guided Reading Activities for Young Readers

Improve reading skills with guided reading activities

Guided reading is not just a fantastic strategy to use to encourage literacy in older children – it also works fabulously for kindergarten-aged children, too. These children will be in the very early stages of developing their reading skills, but carefully chosen guided reading activities will help them engage with reading. It will also provide them with a solid foundation on which to build life-long literacy skills.  

As a teacher, a day carer, a home school parent, or even just a parent who wants to improve their child’s reading skills, planning and setting up a guided reading session can be tough – here are a few tips to help you out! 

How to plan your guided reading session

Planning is crucial when it comes to your guided reading session. You need to think about what you want your session to accomplish. What do you want your child or student to get out of the session? Once you know this, filling in the gaps for the rest of the session will be easy. Just make sure you leave time for your child to ask questions.  

Choosing the text is also really important. Choose a book that will be interesting to the child and that contains words and illustrations that are age appropriate. Ideally, the words should be challenging but not too difficult. There are so many junior readers available including ABC readers, Decodable Readers, and I Can Read. They often have recognisable characters such as Disney characters, or Marvel superheroes, to help gain your child’s interest.  

Plan your session with your child (or for teachers, the group of children) in mind. If there is a small number of children, you’ll need to group children with similar abilities together. This way, the children will get more out of the activities if they’re working with others with similar reading levels. Also, you know best how your child learns – if your child has a short attention span, plan a fun, practical session that doesn’t run too long. This will help keep your child more engaged.  

What guided reading activities will work best for young readers?

There are several activities that work best to engage young readers. These include: 

* Sounding out individual letters, sounds, and words as a group. This is a great activity to start with. 

* Using flashcards with a specific word taken from the book you’ve chosen. 

* Actively encouraging a discussion of the book, its plot, and the words contained within it throughout the session. Ask questions that will encourage children to predict what will happen next, to clarify what they think has happened or will happen, and to question what they might have found challenging. Also, ask them to summarise what the book is about and what happened.  

* Invite the children to read a sentence out loud – this will help them develop their reading skills in an encouraging environment. 

* Try using an audio book in your session, particularly when the children are very young. This will help them stay engaged with the material.  

Check out these great ideas to help develop and grow your child’s reading skills!

Librarian Bec
Right now, Librarian Bec’s hard at work at your local library, sharing a passion for reading with little people and big. Bec writes about inspiring little readers and embracing lovely literature.