Pat
06-19-2009, 08:46 AM
Name of curriculum: Reading Detective
Common Abbreviation: none
Which aspect of LA: comprehension and reading
Age range of students: Grades 3 — 4
Educational Philosophy: none
Worldview: none or possibly secular
Website: http://www.criticalthinking.com/series/015/index_c.jsp
Review: Short selections of reading material is given to the student along with follow up questions. Students focus on a specific types of reading comprehension questions (generalize, compare/contrast, etc). Students are also asked to support their choice by selecting a sentence number or paragraph as evidence of their choice. Material is from books of both fiction and nonfiction.
There are several levels of these books and so the style of each book varies. See the quote in the next question for an explanation of differences.
A quote from the website: Reading Detective'sŪ standards-based critical thinking activities develop the analysis, synthesis, and vocabulary skills students need for exceptional reading comprehension. The activities are especially effective at helping students understand more challenging reading concepts such as drawing inferences, making conclusions, determining cause-and-effect, and using context clues to define vocabulary.
The grades 3–4 (Beginning) and grades 6–12+ remedial (RX) levels are organized into single-skills units with a concluding mixed-skills unit. The grades 5–6 (A1) and 7–8 (B1) levels include mixed-skills throughout. All levels provide an introductory lesson for each skill.
Have you used this curriculum? What levels? Yes, we used "Beginning." We used the book format
Strengths: In the Beginning book and the A1 book the exercise is laid out on a two page spread. The reading selection appears on the left hand page with questions to the right. This allows the student to not have to flip back and forth. The reading selections are from real books that many homeschoolers would recognize and for the most part are interesting. Because the beginning book was organized by a specific reading comprehension topic that allowed my son to concentrate on that topic. Further because he was required to indicate which sentence was his evidence of his choice, he had to go back to the reading piece and when he got things wrong, I was able to help him go very specifically to the piece and see where he went wrong.
Weaknesses: This is a workbook and students do not read complete pieces of literature but rather several paragraphs.
Comments: I began not very sure about this program, but my son began to request to do it first. His reading scores in standardized testing did show some improvement compared to previous years and he seemed when we did some brief test prep to feel more confident about the reading passages. The book had about 90 exercises which lasted us until around mid year so you may wish to schedule this with standadized test in mind if you plan to use such a test. The A1 level has less exercise (around 50) so I think I will schedule less frequently than everyday, but it could be done in the 50 school days before a standardized testing situation.
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Common Abbreviation: none
Which aspect of LA: comprehension and reading
Age range of students: Grades 3 — 4
Educational Philosophy: none
Worldview: none or possibly secular
Website: http://www.criticalthinking.com/series/015/index_c.jsp
Review: Short selections of reading material is given to the student along with follow up questions. Students focus on a specific types of reading comprehension questions (generalize, compare/contrast, etc). Students are also asked to support their choice by selecting a sentence number or paragraph as evidence of their choice. Material is from books of both fiction and nonfiction.
There are several levels of these books and so the style of each book varies. See the quote in the next question for an explanation of differences.
A quote from the website: Reading Detective'sŪ standards-based critical thinking activities develop the analysis, synthesis, and vocabulary skills students need for exceptional reading comprehension. The activities are especially effective at helping students understand more challenging reading concepts such as drawing inferences, making conclusions, determining cause-and-effect, and using context clues to define vocabulary.
The grades 3–4 (Beginning) and grades 6–12+ remedial (RX) levels are organized into single-skills units with a concluding mixed-skills unit. The grades 5–6 (A1) and 7–8 (B1) levels include mixed-skills throughout. All levels provide an introductory lesson for each skill.
Have you used this curriculum? What levels? Yes, we used "Beginning." We used the book format
Strengths: In the Beginning book and the A1 book the exercise is laid out on a two page spread. The reading selection appears on the left hand page with questions to the right. This allows the student to not have to flip back and forth. The reading selections are from real books that many homeschoolers would recognize and for the most part are interesting. Because the beginning book was organized by a specific reading comprehension topic that allowed my son to concentrate on that topic. Further because he was required to indicate which sentence was his evidence of his choice, he had to go back to the reading piece and when he got things wrong, I was able to help him go very specifically to the piece and see where he went wrong.
Weaknesses: This is a workbook and students do not read complete pieces of literature but rather several paragraphs.
Comments: I began not very sure about this program, but my son began to request to do it first. His reading scores in standardized testing did show some improvement compared to previous years and he seemed when we did some brief test prep to feel more confident about the reading passages. The book had about 90 exercises which lasted us until around mid year so you may wish to schedule this with standadized test in mind if you plan to use such a test. The A1 level has less exercise (around 50) so I think I will schedule less frequently than everyday, but it could be done in the 50 school days before a standardized testing situation.
FTC Disclosure: PLEASE NOTE: This is a “For Profit” site. The Library makes commissions on products sold through affiliate and advertiser links. The products reviewed here may or may not have an affiliate link (most don’t), but we want you to be aware that it is a possibility. Whether this affiliation affects the objectivity of the reviews here is debatable. We don’t think it does, but that’s up to you to decide. If you want to know about a specific product, please feel free to ask. For a full list of current affiliates, check out the Affiliate Forum.