The goal of this block is for children to explore the author's message and purpose, create original ideas about the text, relate the text message to the children's own lives, gain an understanding of the skills and techniques that writers employ in their writing, and practice the type of high level critical and creative thinking required for the CATS assessment. Students are grouped and regrouped in various ways as they engage in the Guided Reading Block . In these groups, students learn explicit comprehension strategies and skills and work on fluency. Materials to be used can include an adopted reading series, leveled books, predictable text, trade books, content area selections, and real-life text. The goal of this block is to teach explicit, intentional use of strategies for comprehension.
Teachers often do informal assessments of students' reading progress in guided reading groups.
The Word Work Block is the block for daily development of word recognition, decoding, vocabulary, and spelling strategies. All these activities help children develop decoding skills, spelling accuracy, and vocabulary growth and are usually connected to the reading, writing and content area study going on in the classroom. Written expression is fostered in the Writing Block . In this block, children are engaged in modeled writing, shared writing, and independent writing. In modeled writing, the teacher models her own writing for students and thinks aloud while writing.