Reading Detective: A Review of the Reading Detective Curriculum for Reading Comprehension When Homeschooling

Reading Detective: A Review of the Reading Detective Curriculum for Reading Comprehension When Homeschooling
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Reading Detective has been an excellent addition to my homeschool curriculum. I bought it because my daughter was having trouble recollecting what she read and I felt like she needed to improve her comprehension skills.

As I searched through our homeschool curriculum catalogue, I came across Reading Detective. I read the description and showed my daughter the picture and she said that she would like to have it. I think she liked that she was the detective throughout the book. For me, it was the quality of the content of the materials.

There are 52 lessons, so plan for 53 days to complete the book. One day should be spent on introducing the child to the style of the book and to do the practice assignment. I was glad that they added the practice assignment so that my daughter had a chance to view the book without the pressure of the assignment counting as a grade.

The book has a lot of fun and educational stories. There are both fiction and non-fiction stories. Each story is formatted in paragraphs that are lettered. Then the sentences are numbered. When the story is over the student has questions to answer about the story. After they write the answer, they must give proof as to why their answer is correct. This is where the student is the detective (and I can oversee her comprehension skills). The student must search the story for clues. When the “detective” finds the answer, he or she writes the corresponding paragraph letter and sentence number.

I love this method because it is helping my daughter to accurately search the text to find the information. She pays closer attention to what she is reading and is able to recollect more answers without having to look (although she looks just to check that she was right).

I highly recommend this book. It will take about 15-20 minutes per day to finish a lesson, and it is time well spent. The book costs between $18-$24 depending on which site you buy it from, so it is very affordable.

by Susan Giacometti

by Susan Giacometti