Characteristics of Guided Reading Books: Emergent Level

Text Features

Examples

Message and Content

• familiar people, objects, actions, and situations
• familiar vocabulary
• pictures provide a high level of support

Genre (Text Structure)

• simple recount, simple narrative, or caption book, rhymes, songs

Language Structures

• oral language or very simple written language structures
• one or two sentence patterns, which are repeated throughout with only one or two word changes
• maximum of 12 words per page and 50 words in total

Word Structures

• common high-frequency words repeated
• familiar initial or final letters in key words

Layout

• consistent placement of print on each page
• clear picture-text match
• only 1, occasionally 2, lines of text per page
• 8, 12, or a maximum of 16 pages in total

Text Features

Examples

• reasonably familiar objects and experiences, but can include fanciful situations if grounded in the familiar
• mostly familiar vocabulary
• illustrations provide moderate to high levels of support for key vocabulary

• realistic narratives with a sequence of events, simple fantasies, simple information books, or poetry

• book language structures in which oral language structures appear in dialogue: some simple literary language, for example, rhyme
• repetitive phrases or refrains
• past, present, or future tense; first or third person
• a maximum of 20 words per page and a maximum of 150 words in total

• high-frequency words
• complex words with known phonemes, onsets, and rimes, consonant blends, digraphs, inflections, two syllables, or contractions
• compound words

• consistent placement of text on each page at either top or bottom
• some degree of picture-text match
• line breaks determined by phrases
• a maximum of 7 lines of text on a page
• a maximum of 32 pages in total

Text Features

Examples

• familiar and unfamiliar objects and experiences, including fantastic events
• mostly familiar vocabulary, but can have some unfamiliar vocabulary
• have moderate to no illustrative support

• realistic stories, fantasy, fairy tales, fables, poetry, cumulative stories, adventure stories, biographies, informational books on interesting topics, or magazines or newspapers

• oral, book or literary language structures, including some idiomatic expressions
• oral language structures in dialogue
• past, simple present, or future tenses
• repetitive episodes and events, extended descriptions, and paragraphs
• up to 50 words per page and up to 900 words in total

• normal distribution of high-frequency words
• mostly readable words; challenging ones can have common root words or familiar prefixes and suffixes

• varied placement of text, but conventional line breaks
• up to 20 lines of text on a page
• as long as a simple chapter book

Text Feature

Example from the Text

Key passages for comprehension

Key vocabulary:

Picture-text support:

Sentence structure:

Is written in the  ________ tense and in the  ______ person

Maximum sentence length is _____ words

Total number of words is ________