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I have loved and used Evan-Moor’s Daily Reading Comprehension series for about 5 years. This article reviews this series based on my experiences using Daily Reading Comprehension for grades 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.
Overview
Evan-Moor’s Daily Reading Comprehension series helps students develop reading comprehension skills by learning and practicing specific comprehension skills. The grade 1 book covers the following 6 skills:
- Main Idea and Details
- Who, What, Where, When
- Sequence
- Compare and Contrast
- Fantasy and Reality
- Prediction
Starting in second grade, additional comprehension strategies and skills are added in, including:
- Making Connections
- Visualization
- Organization
- Determining Important Information
- Asking Questions
- Monitoring Comprehension
- Cause and Effect
- Fact and Opinion
- Compare and Contrast
- Making Inferences
- Character and Setting
- Fantasy and Reality
- Author’s Purpose
- Visual Information
- Prediction
I will stop here, but there are more. I think you can get the point that these books thoroughly cover comprehension strategies.
Teacher Pages
Each week’s activities focus on a specific comprehension strategy. A teacher page is included for each week that explains the strategy and provides a breakdown of what each day will cover (Monday through Friday). Each day also includes a brief bolded script of how to teach the concept and introduce the student page.
Student Pages
Student pages begin with a quick reminder of what to focus on while reading the passage. These reminders link directly to the comprehension strategy that the student is learning that week. Next, a reading passage is presented. Following the passage, there is a section to practice the comprehension skill and to practice a strategy.
Answer Key
An answer key is included at the back of the book for easy grading.
Record Pages
A record page is provided to help you keep track of student progress each week. You can record the number of problems the student correctly answered each day and take weekly notes on student strengths or problem areas for further instruction.
Benefits
1) Daily Reading Comprehension provides comprehensive instruction and practice.
When you use Daily Reading Comprehension, you can be sure that your child is learning critical comprehension skills. Reading comprehension is so important for academic success. The skills developed now will help them long term.
2) Passages are the Right Length and Complexity for each grade level.
The single page format provides the right amount of reading for skill-focused comprehension practice.
3) Open and Go
The Daily Reading Comprehension series is truly an open-and-go format. This series is easy to teach and requires minimal preparation time.
Limitations
This product does not cover narration skills. Narration is a popular comprehension activity in the homeschooling community and involves summarizing passages into one’s own words. If narration activities are important to you and you are not using narration in other curricular areas (e.g., history, science, literature, etc.), then you could easily add this to the Daily Reading Comprehension Practice activity. Depending on the length of the passage, you could ask your child to tell you in 1-4 sentences (length may vary by grade level and passage complexity):
- What is one thing you remember about the passage?
- Tell me what happened in the story.
Versatility of the Daily Reading Comprehension Series
The Daily Reading Comprehension Series can be used in additional ways, adding to the value of this product. CLICK HERE to read about more ways to use the Daily Reading Comprehension Series for reading instruction.
Final Recommendations
I highly recommend buying and using Evan-Moor’s Daily Reading Comprehension series. I have used and loved this series for years and plan on using this product as long as I have children in 1st-8th grade.
Try before you buy. CLICK HERE to go to Evan-Moor’s website to download a free sample of Daily Reading Comprehension.
Daily Reading Comprehension, Grade 5 – Teacher’s Edition, E-book