Carson Dellosa Ready to Go Guided Reading: Infer, Grades 5 - 6 Resource Book

I wish I could give this 3.5/5 stars. This Ready to Go Guided Reading Inference set had great intentions and there are many things that I love about it. However, there are some things that I dislike too. I am going to get straight into the pros and cons.Pros:-The set comes as a book that is then disassembled into small laminated books/ pamphlets for the students.-There are three different reading levels (2 articles each) for the grade range contained within the set.-It includes a discussion guide with a variety of questions for each article.-It also contains a Guided Reading Model graphic organizer that you could make copies of for the students to fill out. It has three bullets for predictions, vocabulary, questions and opinions.-The texts are colorful and contain pictures.-The texts are high interest articles with a general theme.Cons:-some of my laminated texts had tears, others tore a little as I tore them out of the book.-Text size is SMALL. My students with dyslexia and reading problems would not be able to read this.-Text is BUSY. With all of the little boxes of information everywhere many of my students would have a hard time focusing on the particular section we were trying to read together.-There is too much text for one small group reading session. With my students it would probably take about 4 sessions to cover all the material. By then, they would have a hard time recalling the first story. I wish I could tear the books down into individual pages. The center of the book is across two pages, so that wouldn't work there.-Vocabulary is in the center of the book, but is needed for text on the first page.I really like the idea of these guided reading texts. The thought is good, the execution is just off. I work with ESE students (students who are disabled) and I was thinking about using these with my 7th graders. They may be too much though and the text is too small. I am going to try to find a way to use them regardless. I like the idea, but maybe they would have been better as one sheet guided text with larger font and cleaner design. I don't recommend them if you have any ESE or ESOL students.

Professional note: I'm an elementary reading (and math) specialist who works with grads K-5.I selected this along with others from this guided reading series. I've stuck with intermediate readers because in the 3 and especially 4&5 grades, the students I support CAN read decently, but demonstrating comprehension through organized oral answers or use of quick graphic organizers is still a heavy task.In this set I find the content aligns student interest more than the curriculum we use. I"m fine with this because it's the SKILL I'm needing broader resources for. I particularly like the inferences focus because many of my students seem 'paralyzed' when it comes to predicting based on the information they've gathered. They are more concerned with being 'right' than make a good guess. The students like the color and organization of the materials; it appeals to the media-savvy minds they're developing. Having a visual variety of texts is also a good tool for practice identifying important or elaborative information beyond just interesting details. I find with 4th and 5th grade, they're looking for more and richer information about the topics they're reading about and these readers provide that at a variety of levels.Final note, though these are 'leveled', most readers that are qualified this way tend to have not only less complicated vocabulary, but also fewer words and features. I find this (as with others in this series) tend to thin out the advance language piece more than reduce overall word count.Overall, happy to add this to my ever-expanding supplemental library.

The Ready to Go Guided Reading: Infer for Grades 5 - 6 is guided reading set. The book contains 6 copies of 6 different level readers. The pages are cardstock, laminated page. They come bound in the book with normal binding being glued at the spine. It would have been so much better if the binding was different. I don’t like having to literally rip the pages out. It would have been nice if the pages had been perforated for easier tearing or even better, ring bound. The book has 3 different reading levels but I feel that they all were not as advanced as my 5th and 6th grade students read now.