I grew up in the south singing in all kinds of churches, and congregational singing was a big part of that Sunday experience. When the music minister wanted to introduce a new song or refrain, she’d typically start with call and response before the service began. By the third time through, most folks, even if they couldn’t read music, could sing along. This feels good. The congregation is able to participate, and the music minister feels like her congregation is wonderfully engaged.

This is what we do in guided reading. When we read a passage chorally, multiple times, we teach kids to sing along. When kids see words appearing in multiple passages that are read and reread, many (not all) students commit these high frequency words to sight word memory. However, they aren’t actually doing the work of decoding. They haven’t learned skills to unlock novel words.

The same can be said for the member of the congregation who doesn’t read music. Unless he’s got one heck of an ear, he can only join in the singing once he’s heard the tune multiple times.

I began learning to play the piano at a young age. Before my feet could touch the ground, our family’s closest friends put masking tape on the keys of their piano and taught me how to map the keys to the notes on the music staff. I began piano lessons in third grade and went on to play multiple instruments. I have a degree in vocal performance. I can turn to any hymn in the hymnal and sing confidently on the first pass. As my partner will attest, I get a little irritated when the worship aid only includes the words. My experience is much richer if I can join in the first time through by reading the actual music on the page.

When we train kids to read through guided reading, we are teaching them skills for that song. Sure, they’ll begin to recognize some words that appear over and over again, but it’s not as liberating as being able to attack all words confidently.

When we explicitly teach a kid to decode at the word level, he has the ability to choose any text and read confidently. The ability to decode easily frees up the mind to focus on the task of comprehension.

Guided reading has no place in a science of reading based classroom. It encourages kids to rely on the congregation and context to unlock words.

This results in a kid who uses compensatory skills to unlock text.

What happens when this kid gets to 4th grade and can no longer rely on background knowledge or the congregation? I think we all know. Why does guided reading continue to thrive in our classrooms?

Choral and repeated reading feels good from the perspective of the educator. It feels like it’s working. The kids participate and sing along. They can answer questions specific to that particular text. It feels like things are improving, but this type of reading doesn’t generalize to the whole of the academic repertoire.

We can’t possibly teach kids the tunes to all possible text. While we only sing maybe one novel song once a quarter in church, kids need to be able to access novel text throughout the academic day. If we took the time used in classrooms for guided reading and silent reading and repurposed it for explicit instruction in all parts of the reading rope, we’d see meaningful gains for all kids.