Travelling with a little light reading

Today I am posting via Highway 29... yes, I shouldn't be on my phone, especially blogging but I wanted some ideas from y'all.

I'm rereading this... Making the most of small groups, differentiation for all.

Since my school year ends Monday,  I wanted to read this while my current instructional practices were fresh in my mind.  It's funny how much you forget in two weeks after school ends haha...

In our guided reading groups, we have to follow the PALs beginning/transitional reading lesson plans.  But it's also nice to have different ideas.  We aren't allowed to stray far from the PALs templates but I think other ideas are good as well.

My question:  if you had to give a brief snapshot of your guided reading time, what would it look like?

Mine depends on the level of my student.  At the beginning of the year, most of my readers are still beginning readers and do lots with word recognition in and out of text with vocabulary words pulled from a familiar text.  We then go into a new text (which ends up with 4-5 books each week).  Comprehension is not a main focus, but I have them read aloud and then retell and have some story elements added when we reflect at the end.

My transitional readers start with fluency practice, either from a levelled passage or from a previously read text.  Then they read while I listen or individually conference with them for comprehension, etc. 

This is not everything that I do, but the main points of my group.  This year we cut out the word study part but were now told to add that back in... I do wish someone would make up their mind!!

So... let's get some discussion going! :)