Reading Detective Beginning: Higher-Order Thinking to Improve ELA Comprehension
- PDF
Description
A 192-page printable PDF language arts ebook for grades 3-4 that teaches a depth of analysis that guarantees superior reading comprehension, top grades, and higher test scores!
These highly-effective, literature-based critical thinking activities develop the analysis, synthesis, and vocabulary skills students need for exceptional reading comprehension at their grade level. This activity book is especially effective at helping students understand challenging critical reading concepts such as making inferences, drawing conclusions, determining cause and effect, using context clues to define vocabulary, and making predictions and generalizations.
Students read and analyze short literature passages and stories that include fiction and nonfiction genres. Then they answer multiple-choice and short-response questions, citing sentence evidence to support their answers. Concepts and skills covered include:
Literary Analysis Skills
• Define vocabulary using context clues
• Recognize figurative language
• Identify main idea, supporting details, and theme
• Recognize literary devices
• Identify story elements: theme, plot, setting, and characters
Reading Detective® Beginning includes the following genres:
Award-Winning Literature Excerpts
• The Barn
• Sable
• Dexter
• The Cricket in Times Square
• The Stories Huey Tells
• Sideways Stories from Wayside School
• Chocolate Fever
Stories and Articles
• Mystery
• Humor
• History
• Adventure
Nonfiction Topics
• Science
• Math
• Geography
• History
• Biography
• Inventions
• Sports
The Grades 3–4 (Beginning) level is organized into single-skills units with a concluding mixed-skills unit.
Teaching Support
Includes pretests, post-tests, lesson guidelines, and answers with detailed evidence. Reading and literary analysis skills are based on grade-level standards.
MORE DETAILS
Teacher Overview
The purpose of this program is to enable students to use higher order thinking to develop their reading comprehension skills. The reading skills are based on reading standards and assessment tests for Grades 3 and 4.
The goal of the program is to teach students how to analyze what they read. Students answer questions based on a passage and then provide supporting evidence from the text for their answers. Each sentence is identified with a superscripted number; each paragraph has a letter. Students use these numbers and letters to cite specific sentences and paragraphs as evidence.
The purpose in asking for evidence is to:
- Encourage students to go beyond simple recall of information.
- Require students to support their answers by drawing on specific information from the passage.
- Clarify for the teacher a student’s thinking about and understanding of the material.
- Require students to analyze the passage in greater depth.
Contents
Pre- and posttests are provided to offer a general assessment of students’ skills before and after using the program. Two passages, one fiction and one nonfiction, are offered for each. These tests are NOT intended as a formal diagnostic tool to assess a student’s reading abilities. They are simply meant to give you a general idea of your students’ skills in reading comprehension. They should be used only for determining which skills and lessons to focus on.
The Beginning book is divided into 7 specific skill units: inference/conclusion, vocabulary, story elements, main idea/theme, cause/effect, prediction, and mixed skills. Each unit begins with a lesson to introduce and/or review the skill. A practice activity is also included. There are 7 reading passages for each skill. The last unit combines all the skills in each story.
The book contains three types of reading passages:
- Nonfiction articles on a variety of topics in the different content areas
- Fictional stories in a variety of writing styles
- Literature excerpts from award-winning and well-known authors frequently read in schools
Each exercise provides a passage for the student to read followed by a series of questions. Most of the questions are multiple choice or short answer.
A key component in this book is discussion. Some answers include explanations which show how the evidence given supports the correct answer. These explanations can be used as a basis for discussion of students’ answer choices and supporting evidence. Many of the questions (inference and prediction, for example), are open to interpretation. It is important to discuss with students how they came up with their answers and how the evidence does or does not support their answers. We give what we consider to be the best possible answer based on the evidence. If you feel a student has made a good case for a response, you can accept that answer. The key to this program is encouraging students to think about what they read in order to better understand it. The evidence that a student gives is the key to pinpointing his or her understanding of the content.
Test Prep
Reading Detective® guarantees top performance on assessment tests, including:
- Stanford Achievement Test™ (SAT/10)
- California Achievement Tests (CAT/6)
- Florida State Assessment (FSA)
- Iowa Tests of Basic Skills® (ITBS®)
- Secondary School Admissions Test (SSAT)
- Most State Assessments
- and many more!
Awards
- Cathy Duffy 101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum
- Creative Child Magazine Media of the Year Award
- Informal Education Products Product of the Year
- Learning® Magazine Teachers’ Choice Awards
- Mensa Recommended Materials for the Gifted
- The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval
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Written by: Cheryl Block, Carrie Beckwith, Margaret Hockett, and David White
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Click Here for more Detective activities by The Critical Thinking Co.
