Professional Practice
Standard 4: Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

A guided reading segment from a 90-minute daily literacy lesson, aligned with students’ reading skills, implemented in a Kindergarten classroom at the start of each day, following a Multilit program focused on the explicit teaching of literacy skills.

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Since I am a firm believer in providing an ‘enabling context’ for a safe and supportive learning environment, as recommended by CESE (2020), differentiated learning opportunities for students aligned with their intellectual development were offered, to contribute to a pro-social environment in the classroom.

Guided reading is a major component of literacy development and so, in order to give a positive experience of reading to the learners which contributed to their motivation and emotional wellbeing, I aligned the level of readers with students’ ability to decode words within their capacity to read and yet still be challenged to practise literacy strategies like diagraphs, tricky words, and blending to read independently. The ability to decode was assessed during an initial explicit teaching session, prior to the reading segment, based on students’ ability to blend and segment sounds. The levels of readers were altered every week to progress to the next higher level, dependent on students’ progress.

Broadly, for students who were struggling to read even three-sound words and therefore required one-on-one assistance to practice their diagraphs, tricky words, and correspondence of letters and sounds, I conducted a guided reading session with each group, while the others were provided with differentiated activities to practise further or extend their understanding. Some of the strategies I used with students requiring additional practice were ‘grab bag words and sentences’ for reading practice or using hollow templates for the digraph to practise through play dough letter formation. I also used sound boxes to practise segmenting and blending. Students who were working beyond the expected level were given extension activities along with higher-level readers. Some of the extension activities I used allowed group work, pairing struggling students with competent readers. I also used word transformation and building activities and asking inferential questions from the decodable text.