Customer Reviews

Week-by-Week Homework for Building Reading Comprehension and Fluency, Grades 3-6: 30 Reproducible, High-Interest Passages for Kids to Read Aloud at HomeNWith Companion Activities

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I have studied many reading books for my children. I cannot say enough good things about this one. Everybody seems to know what reading is about. Many parents buy reading materials without much thought. This book is about reading with "intention" and "purpose". It's skill-building drills with clear methods and objectives. It will boost your child's true ability effectively many other books won't do. It benefited my 4th grader so much that I bought another copy for my 2nd grader's future use. Before 3rd grade, I recommend the online weekly drills provided by Beestar (www.beestar.org). They are common in that reading skill objectives and techniques are meshed into nice informative material. Your child gets both in one run.

I am surprised other reviewers have not mentioned inaccuracies and errors in this book. For example, in the first story Mary Rose refers to the Arawak Indians as both the Arawak and the Arawaks. I consider this a big error considering the passage is only a few paragraphs long. The second story on the Pilgrims contains inaccuracies and many of the points she chooses do not support her thesis that parents are strict. Requiring children to stand at the dinner table is an example of parental strictness. Other examples were not at all related to strictness but instead to conditions of poverty.

The text is also fraught with typographical errors, some of which could be very confusing to a beginning reader. E.g. :"Then he returned home and happily at his dinner" (p. 32). Obviously this should read "ate" his dinner.

Additionally, many stories are overpunctuated. Some stories even have a double exclamation point in the title (e.g. Bananas!!).

Slang (improperly used at that) is another troubling element... a story on astronauts' water sources warns "Don't gross out!"

There are some inaccurate explanations. Rose's explanation of the use of italics is misleading. She italicizes words of foreign origin the first story. This use is correct, but her explanation of the use of italics does not correspond to the way she uses it.

There are positive aspects to this book, however. It clearly states the objectives for each section and has good questions to go with the passages. I also appreciated how the author related the content of the book to standardized assessments.

This book is excellent for providing "at home" reading practice for your students. Our 4th grade teachers used this by sending one lesson home each week- due back on Friday. It was a great help for parents to understand ways to help their child while also giving students meaningful reading assignments at home. It has a space for parents to sign before the lesson is turned in, which is very helpful. The stories are also extremely engaging, with a variety of genres.

I am a forth grade teacher. I am currently using this book with my struggling reader and it works! He has trouble decoding more than he does understanding. He practices the story at home every night for 4 days and returns it on Friday. The improvement is amazing. He is feeling more confident reading other texts now.

I absolutely love this book for both teachers or parents looking to improve reading skills. My daughter first came home with these stories from her 4th grade teacher and I loved them so much I bought a copy to use with the students I tutor. Now I'm teaching basic skills to fifth graders and do these stories one-on-one. Each story is intelligently written with a touch of humor and jam-packed with interesting facts. Topics include American History ("Thomas Jefferson and the Big Cheese"), fiction, biography, poetry, science (Star Trek!"), and popular culture. There is one reading skill to work on per story such as using context clues, italics, or main idea/supporting details. I've just ordered Mary Rose's other similar books for math and other reading levels. One word of caution: the vocabulary may be too advanced for a struggling third grader--best for grades 4-6 unless the child is already a fluent reader.

I bought this book last summer and used it with my 5th grade language arts students this past year. It contains some helpful usage and assessment ideas. The passages are divided into sections, all of them "kid-interesting" content. Each assignment features a particular reading skill and tips to the parent on how to help his/her child with the assignment. There is a place at the bottom of each assignment for both child and parent to sign. Certainly I recommend it to teachers, but I would also recommend it to parents who would like to help their children's reading skills but might be at a loss as to how to help them.

The author said that this book wass designed for 4th graders with reading problems. My kid had no reading problem and was about to enter 3 grade. I thought this book might be of the right level. But I was wrong. This book may be good for 2nd graders.
But if the level is good for your kid, the book itself is not bad. The articles are interesting. But still, I think "wordly wise 3000" is a better choice. The "wordly wise 3000 book A" is about the same level.

I've been assigning these readings weekly to my fifth graders for a few years now.
The parents and students love them as a quick, manageable, helpful activity they can do together in about 20 minutes.
They just return it, signed, at the end of the week, and I give them credit towards their reading grade.
Some parents don't take time to read with their children until it is assigned; so it's good to give them a reason to do it!

While this book is a great concept, the entire book is filled with errors in grammar and orthography. Many of the questions are vague or entirely inappropriate for the corresponding story and the author apparently is not terribly concerned with the stories being factually accurate. My daughter started bringing home the stories as homework and was experiencing a great deal of frustration with them. This is a 10 year old that loves to curl up with an anatomy book for fun. I didn't understand the frustration until I started reading the stories. In order to get her to read them, I started having her edit them in red ink prior to handing them in to her teacher. The teacher did not appreciate it, but she finally got the message and stopped sending them home. The fact that a book made it to press without being properly edited is disheartening. The fact that teachers are praising it is disturbing. The fact that schools are using such low quality materials enrages me and helps explain the problems with our education system. For the teachers that think this is a great resource, I have a suggestion: Go get an education.

My first grader gets this series for homework. When my son began having reading comprehension problems, I decided to try it on him. I bought the Reading Comprehension and Fluency for grades 3-6.

This book has stories from a variety of different genres: American history, fiction, biography, poetry, science, popular culture. Before each section is a review of the stories, what skills are taught, and how parents can teach those skills.

Every story works on only one specific skill that helps improve reading comprehension. For instance, italics and boldface are usually clues to indicate the importance of a word. The children should pay extra attention when reading them. For the exercise, the students are presented a story with italicized words peppered throughout followed by questions related to those italicized words. Some test taking skills are included, like directing students to read the questions before reading the story.

Students must answer questions in sentences, which I think is great. Multiple choice problems have their place, but they make it too easy to just guess. With written answers, I can see my son's thought process more clearly. Although the answers are fill in, the book includes an answer key.

I can see why my daughter's teacher uses this series. Reading comprehension is one of the most difficult things for parents to teach -- unlike math, where one may do drills. Here, I felt like he either gets it or he doesn't. I wasn't sure what to teach to help him improve comprehension. This book is a great help showing me the way.