Fountas and Pinnell's 1996 Guided reading: Good first teaching for all children revives E.W. Dolch's reading program known as independent reading. He explains this approach in the essay "Individualized Reading vs. Group Reading", captured in Joe Frost's Issues and innovations in the Teacher of Reading (1967).
Dolch (and others) had come to see that scaffolding means helping learners master tasks of increasing difficulty and complexity. More, it means meeting each learner where they are at, and giving them exactly "the help that he needs just when he needs it" (p. 141). "So 'a book suited to the child' is a basic rule of individualized reading" (p. 145).
By the time we were ready to write our how-to manual for the storytent program, we were making reference to "an adaptation of guided reading, which involves promoting specific reading strategies (Fountas & Pinnell, 1996). We use leveled books that are in children’s instructional ranges (not too hard, not too easy) and try, gently, to match up children and texts."
Guided reading or individualized readings supposes an understanding of reading levels and the availability of books at all levels. Following Fountas and Pinnell, we use a letter system that relates loosely to grade level. Although there are commercial sets of guided readers designed to take children through all the levels, we prefer using trade fiction - the books and stories children aready love - which we level with the help of some online tools. You can see a partial list of the books we use in this page's sidebar.
One of our favourite tools is the Beaverton School District's Leveled Books Database. Nancy Giansante of the the McCarthy-Towne School offers another leveled book list. Still not satisfied? Check out Battle Creek's Guided Reading Leveled Library for more lists and links to related resources.