How To Teach Guided Reading Virtually
You’ll love these tips for how to teach guided reading online!
Teaching guided reading virtually has become the norm for many teachers. Today we are talking about five tips to make guided reading fun and engaging while instructing in a virtual environment.
In today’s blog post, you're going to learn how to teach guided reading online, whether you're teaching virtually, or if you're working remotely as a tutor, I have some great tips for you that are going to help you feel more confident in your online teaching abilities.
Teaching guided reading virtually can be fun and engaging if you have the right tools!
Guided reading online can be fun and engaging when you have the right tools
The first thing I want to say is that teaching reading can be engaging online! A lot of teachers during the pandemic were really worried about this. I actually made a video of how to teach guided reading on Zoom. You can go back and watch that video. Even though it was one of my first videos (the lighting was terrible, the content was very helpful). I got a lot of hits on that video, because people really needed help with that back then and now online teaching seems like the new normal. I had been tutoring online already. So I knew how to use the technology piece of it. That's the key: teaching reading online can be just as fun and engaging. Tell yourself that and don't doubt it because if you have a negative mindset about it, it's going to come across and you're not going to enjoy doing it.
Zoom allows you to share your screen and read with your students online.
Zoom allows you to share your screen and read with your students online
Zoom is a great place to teach guided reading online because you can share your screen. There's so many ways to do this. One of the best ways is just projecting the book that you're using for the virtual guided reading lesson. One of the many reasons I love the website Reading A to Z because you can do this easily. I’ll talk more about that in the next tip. You can also share a guided reading book with a document camera. That can get a little more tricky if the student doesn't have the book in front of them. How you teach guided reading remotely is your preference. Zoom is an amazing tool to teach guided reading and if you’re already tutoring online, you’ll love the ease of screen sharing a book.
Reading A to Z is a great website for teaching reading virtually.
Reading A to Z is a great website for teaching reading virtually
Using the website, Reading A to Z, is worth the money. It's about $119 a year, I think and you get access to thousands of books and resources. You can project them all and do them online. There's a pointer, there's a highlighter, and you can even print the books. I love that you could send them to kids if you wanted them to have a physical copy. I use this website every week in my tutoring business. I've also used it in my own first grade classroom and I used it a ton last year when I was a virtual teacher for first grade.
A document camera allows you to do a word work activity right along with your students!
A document camera allows you to do a word work activity right along with your students
A document camera works really well for doing word work activities. That's something that's transformed my tutoring business this past year. In my mind, I thought that kids had to have everything virtual. I realized I could have word sorts that I either created or scanned, and I could send it to their parents and they would print them ahead of time. All of my students preferred to do the word sort alongside me. I would use a document camera and project the word work activity onto the screen while the student told me where to move the pieces. They never got bored with it! I was able to use a spelling assessment to figure out what spelling patterns they were missing and that was our word work piece of a tutoring session before we got into the guided reading part. A document camera is fairly inexpensive and really worth the money. I also have a blog post about tutoring tech tools that you just can't live without and things that I use in my own tutoring business. If you're teaching on Outschool or tutoring from home, I highly recommend you check out that blog post.
Everything is the same online as in person, you just have to be confident in your teaching abilities
Everything is the same online as in person, you just have to be confident in your teaching abilities
My last tip is to repeat this mantra: teaching guided reading online is the same as in person. You just have to be confident in your abilities. There's going to be varying opinions, so please share your opinion in the comments below on which you prefer. I've taught guided reading both ways and I have gotten the same results from both. If you're wanting to shift your tutoring business to an online tutoring business, definitely try guided reading online. If you're wanting to teach an Outschool class, practice this with a tutoring client beforehand and just be confident in your abilities.
So there you have it. Those are the best ways to teach guided reading online. It's all about the tools you have and your attitude. If you're a great teacher, it's going to come across no matter what you're teaching, so just be confident in your abilities. Tell me in the comments below: Have you taught guided reading virtually? I'd love to know!
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