Copyright © 2013 Pearson, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.1

Shared Reading

Introduction

Instructional Design

Mini-Lessons

This guide identifies how Good Habits, Great Readers Shared Reading lessons provide essential reading strategies and skills in a whole-group setting. It explains how Shared Reading builds a common way of talking about books for students in Grades K–6. It also explores the program’s Shared Reading instructional design that includes Mini-lessons and Focus Lessons and shows how assessment is addressed in the program.

Every day of Good Habits, Great Readers instruction begins with a twenty-five-minute, whole-class Shared Reading lesson. Look to your Shared Reading Teacher’s Guide for detailed daily lesson plans.

In each of the four weeks of instruction for every unit, students explore a different comprehension strategy related to the habit, using a core text or series of poems.

For example, in Unit 2, students explore how great readers make sense of text. During the first week, students learn how to make predictions. During the second week, they learn how to ask questions. In the third week, students learn strategies to problem-solve unfamiliar words, and in the fourth week, they learn how to summarize and retell what they have read.

A day’s Shared Reading lesson has two parts: the Mini-lesson and the Focus Lesson.

The ten-minute Mini-lessons provide a brief lesson on a skill or component of reading. The content and frequency of these lessons varies by grade level.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.2

Focus Lessons

For example, in Grades K–3, the Mini-lessons might address foundational reading skills such as phonemic awareness and phonics.

In Grades 4–6, the content becomes more advanced as the focus shifts to topics such as nonfiction text features and word study.

Shared Reading includes strategy-based Focus Lessons each week.

Every Shared Reading lesson provides whole-class and individual instruction. Focus Lessons take an in-depth look at a specific comprehension strategy or reading habit.

Grades K–3 use resources such as big books, trade books, and poetry posters. Grades 4–6 use a combination of teacher-modeled texts and student readers. All levels may also include selections from the Reader’s Theater Anthology.

Focus Lessons expose students to a variety of genres and text structures. You will begin the lesson with explicit teacher modeling—using a read-aloud to introduce the featured reading strategy and a think aloud to model its application.

During Talk Together, you will use critical-thinking prompts and discussion questions to support students as they practice working with peers to apply the strategy.

Review and Reflect provides an opportunity for you to review and reinforce the strategy.

Students in Grades 4–6 then have a chance to apply the strategy to a text found in the Student Reader.

Copyright © 2013 Pearson, Inc. or its affiliates. All rights reserved.3

Assessing Student Understanding

Review

Throughout the Shared Reading lessons, you will find opportunities for informal, on-going assessment.

Shared Reading Focus Lessons include behavior-based prompts and questions to use during conferences, which assess students’ understanding and ability to apply focus strategies. In Grades K–3, these questions and prompts are built into each Focus Lesson.

In Grades 4–6, you will find the questions and prompts in the Wrap Up section immediately following the week’s Focus Lessons.

For students who need additional practice, Shared Reading Focus Lessons include suggestions for reteaching and extending lessons as well as activities to support English language learners. The Phonics and Vocabulary Kits for Grades K–3 are another resource that includes explicit instruction and decodable readers.

For additional assessment resources, look to your Assessment Handbook. Here you will find additional questions that correspond to each unit of Shared Reading instruction.

This guide identified how Good Habits, Great Readers Shared Reading lessons provide essential reading strategies and skills in a whole-group setting. It explained how Shared Reading builds a common way of talking about books for students in Grades K–6. It also explored the program’s Shared Reading instructional design that includes Mini-lessons and Focus Lessons and showed how assessment is addressed in the program.