Ready to go with Ready to Read

In November I attended a workshop run by Team Solutions that was about the new titles in the Ready to Read series.  There has been a review of this series and there are new ideas about its texts.  Previously the big books used for shared reading were enlarged versions of the books used for guided reading, with the idea that children could be introduced to the books in shared reading, and that this would make it easier to read them in guided reading sessions.  The thinking now about this is that being introduced to the texts first in shared reading reduces opportunities for building a reading practice.  This is because children can come to rely on memory, rather than using strategies to decode the texts they read.
The colour wheel has been removed from the shared books in response to this.

Also linked to memorising texts - the new Ready to Read guided texts are less repetitive in structure than previous texts, giving children more of an opportunity to use decoding strategies in guided reading.  I thought this was a positive step, as I have observed some of my new entrants learning the sentence structure in guided reading books then not really attending to the text as they read, just plugging in the change they can see in the picture.  I have a girl in my class who can still 'rattle off' the content of books she read in her previous class almost without looking at the words, which is an impressive skill in itself but not the intention in guided reading lessons.  One of my colleagues disagreed that the repetitive structure was a problem, saying that it helped to provide practice in correctly structuring a sentence, particularly for those with low oral language skills.  We have been learning in our other literacy PD that it is important for children with low oral language skills to be provided with models of correctly-structured sentences.  This led to a discussion of 'round robin' reading which the facilitator saw as an ineffective strategy.  Some saw it as a way to make sure children were supported with correct sentence structures.  I have done some round robin reading with my reading groups but have noticed that children 'tune out' when it is not their turn.  I have started instead to get them to read 'quietly in your mind' and asking questions to check comprehension.
This is my response to the article we read as part of this PD, "Ready to go with Ready to Read" by Kay Hancock:

PTC 4:

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills