I write the letter myself in order to provide text that supports the development of reading strategies. The text in the letter relates to the students' daily events. The morning letter enables the teacher to select specific vocabulary and sentence structures, and to write a passage that requires students to use their previous knowledge to decode the print. Students read the letter individually, underlining unfamiliar text and using their individual strategy list to help them decode the meaning. Each day students are encouraged to demonstrate for the group their use of strategies for the unfamiliar text they have underlined in the morning letter.
Students discuss the rationale and appropriateness of choosing particular strategies.
On some occasions, they ask appropriate guiding questions of each other. Finally students are required to summarize the main message in the text without memorizing each word. The success of this kind of lesson is dependent on maintaining a risk-free environment for students. The main objective is for the students to become aware of what they need to be thinking while they read. A large part of guided reading is talking about reading.