The Importance of Guided Practice

Guided practice is a vital step in teaching all of our readers. It is an especially important one for our struggling readers. But we are often tempted to skip right over it and head straight to independent work.

Today, I want to explore exactly what guided practice is and why it is a necessary component of teaching our learners.

*This post contains affiliate links.

You set your sweet learners to work independently on a skill or strategy only to be met by, “I don’t know what to do,” or “I don’t understand this.”

What? How could your learners not understand it? You explicitly taught and modeled the skill. I mean you even dressed up into costume this time! How in the world could they be stumped? How could they be lost?

 

What is GUIDED Practice?

If you’ve taught for very long in any setting {classroom, tutoring, homeschooling}, you’ve probably been there.

So what did go wrong? I’ll tell you exactly what the problem usually is when this happens to me: I often don’t give my learners enough GUIDED practice.

We all know what practice is. After all, “practice makes perfect,” right? But what is guided practice?

Guided practice happens AFTER we have modeled and taught the skills to our learners and BEFORE we set them free to try it on their own.

This is a time that we allow our learners to practice the same skill or strategy WITH OUR HELP in a safe setting. This can happen one-on-one with learners or in small groups.

During this time, we give our learners IMMEDIATE feedback if they make a mistake or struggle with a step. We can quickly guide them back on track and help them understand the why and how of the new concept.

We are helping them see how the new concept can be MANIPULATED and APPLIED to real reading {or other subject areas} during guided practice.

 

Why is Guided Practice so Important?

Guided practice is important for all our learners, but I’d like to zero in on struggling learners for a moment.

Would you like to know the biggest reason that struggling learners need you to practice new concepts and skills with them before they are ready to apply them for themselves?

Besides language disabilities (such processing issues), the biggest reason is that many of our struggling learners lack the skills needed to bridge the gap themselves. Namely executive functioning skills.

Executive functioning skills include things like:

• the ability to think about concepts in a flexible way
• the ability to face obstacles with a good attitude
• the ability to follow through to complete a task or goal
• the ability to stay focused, even when frustrated or bored

To be frank, these learners simply don’t know how to go from Point A to Point C without us guiding them through the process of Point B. And to be even more frank, they aren’t going to develop all these skills on their own. They need us to guide them.

Want to read more about executive functioning skills?
I recommend this book!

 

Why are We so Tempted to Skip Guided Practice?

If I were to pick the biggest reason we skip guided practice, it’s TIME. We simply feel there isn’t enough of it. This can be especially true in the classroom setting, where extra demands for time come into play.

Be we must make the time. Time to confer with learners during one-on-one conferences. Time working with learners during guided reading groups or strategy groups. What learners get during guided practice can strengthen their executive functioning skills, giving them strategies they need for success in school AND in life. Yes, these are LIFE SKILLS.

We may also feel like we don’t have the tools or know the strategies for planning meaningful practice activities. That’s why you’ll find so many free printables on my site.

It’s also one of the biggest reasons why The Measured Mom and I developed our online course, Teaching Every Reader. We wanted to make sure you were loaded with the tools you needed.

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Any way you slice it, we simply can’t skip guided practice. This is the time when our struggling readers can safely explore and develop in their own executive functioning skills and reading strategies.

I’d love to hear from you! What’s your biggest challenge? What keeps you from giving learners the guided practice time they need?

 

Enjoy teaching!
~Becky