Rationale
I taught kindergarten in a primarily Caucasian, middle-class school, located in west Omaha. Of my 23 students, 11 were boys and 12 were girls. Seven of my students were receiving literacy intervention services for performing below level on beginning of the year benchmark assessments that included letter ID and letter sounds, as well as performing below the 20th percentile on the Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) test.
According to the Fountas and Pinnell text levels, of my 23 students, seven were non-readers, four were reading at text level A, seven were B’s, two were C’s, and four were D’s. By the end of Kindergarten, students need to be reading at a level D. According to the Fountas and Pinnell progress monitoring chart, 48% of students were not on track to meet this goal.
Guided reading instruction was an area that I felt uncomfortable planning for and teaching due to lack of experience. My experience teaching guided reading had been restricted to readers at a text level D or above. Since the readers I was previously working with already had the skills to decode simple words, I was not adequately prepared for teaching non-readers how to become readers. Preparing reading level appropriate plans was a significant struggle since I was unfamiliar with teaching kindergarten. I had difficulty planning lessons focused around the skills my students needed in order to develop into readers. Additionally, I noticed that my students seemed disengaged during guided reading due to a use of inappropriate materials that were being used during the lessons. I believed that student engagement and achievement in reading would increase if I was able to strengthen my ability to plan effective guided reading lessons.
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