Excellent book with really good selections that can easily be expanded upon by teachers or homeschool parents/teachers. I really like the choices of authors and the simplicity of using the material and coming up with an evaluation of the students work (grading). I have a 7th grader who tests at 12th grade and have found it difficult to challenge him. This book really helps and now we are looking for a more advanced reading comprehension edition. ( )

I frequently buy from Prufrock Press for supplementation in my gifted classrooms, and love their resources. Jacob’s Ladder is appropriately challenging for middle school gifted learners and is engaging. I liked the inclusion of poetry, as that is one area my students don’t get as much practice or direct instruction. ( )

The Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Program addressed reading comprehension skills in higher level students. It is based on an inquiry process using skill ladders that begin with simple skills and progress to critical thinking about various texts. These texts include sections of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction.

The book includes activities for the students as well as posing standards-based questions. The culminating activities appear particularly interesting and helpful.

There is an interesting section addressed to teachers that explains the tasks given as well as a summary of the goals of the program.

I found the program accessible and interesting. I especially liked the way skills were applied to the different texts. Although my students are not high level learners, I could see many ways the skill ladders could be used with them and the tasks adapted for them.

Altogether it appears to be an engaging program. My one hesitation is that it should definitely be used as a supplemental program since it relies on what I consider to be the most egregious failing of the common core standards: examining short pieces of texts divorced from their larger context as well as the social/historical context of the times in which they were written. While skills can and should be practiced in isolation, ultimately the tasks should demand an integration of skills applied to a longer text. Students need to develop the stamina to read novels as well as short stories and excepts.

Other than that one caveat, I found the program to be solid and useful. I think it would empower teachers to create reading programs in their classrooms that would be effective as well as both challenging and enjoyable for the students. ( )

I won this book.

I really love this series of books for educators. I've won several of them now and each one is really nice. The books each include examples educators could easily use in the classroom to test their students abilities. ( )

Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program is, as always, a highly useful and well developed teacher resource from Prufrock Press. The book contains activity ladders for three genres: short stories, poetry, and biographies. The text samples utilized in the short story and poetry lessons are largely familiar (aesop's fables, english romantic poets, etc.) making it easy for a teacher to jump into the activities themselves. For the biographies section, I was pleased to see more than the usual white males seen in history books. Women such as mathematician Katherine Johnson and persons of color such as writer James Baldwin are given their due in this volume. This book contains everything a teacher needs to try out a new reading pedagogy and I highly recommend it.