Nonfiction Reading Comprehension: Science, Grades 1-2: Science, Grades 1-2

This is a great and valuable book. It teaches Reading and History. The History stories are not to short and not to long. They are also interesting and can keep my child's attention thru the entire story and this is no easy feat. After each lesson are questions that help them build their test taking skills and I like that they are multiple choice and a reasonable amount but not so many as to frustrate them. I liked this so much that I also bought the Science one from this company...I would highly recommend this book!!! I have included pictures of a couple random lessons...

I was super excited to receive this book for my second grade son. I quickly inspected it and unfortunately- content wise- I do not feel this book is a great purchase. I was really hoping to have some one page summaries of key historical topics to assign my son while school is out with insightful questions. Many of the topics are not really relevant to history or key topical areas I would have expected. There are only about 10 pages relevant to the American government or key figures in history (like Lincoln, Patrick Henry, Boston tea party). The rest was on more esoteric topics like the first cowboys, foxes and coyotes, English language examples, a petrified giant, shoes, houses in Amsterdam and mountain men like Jim Bridget). If you don’t mind this type of diversity in topics then the book is probably fine. I was looking for more mainstream ones though- big picture key items.

My daughter has learning disabilities and comprehension is one area we struggle in. I homeschool and have many books for teaching any one concept so that I can reinforce the information learned and not just put information out there just because its a requirement. The layout of this book is great. Vocabulary words that will be referenced in the following story are taught and cover learning the words, but also teaches that one word can have a variety of meanings. The practice of teaching the vocabulary words also helps with fluency in reading and that increases comprehension. The stories told are interesting and informative. The quizzes help to reinforce what was read and delve a little deeper in the meaning of the story and not just the facts. I found this book to be well thought out and my daughters favorite way of learning Social Studies/History.

These workbooks are so well written, miles ahead of the other popular publishers! Material is very well presented in sentences that build upon each other to encourage much deeper understanding and retention of information. This has been our go-to resource during the pandemic-related school closure. In fact, the online resources our school provided were so pathetic, that we entirely skipped them and went with these workbooks instead. My 2nd grader was able to get ahead while actually enjoying doing her homework! Highly recommend!

The book seems okay, but is definitely not what I expected. Some of the stories barely touch on the historical topic at all, so really it's better to use this for reading than social studies. Also they only used the last name on the submarine story making it necessary to research who exactly they were talking about. There is no organization to it, so topics are extremely mixed up throughout. I will use it to help my son with his reading but I won't be buying these again

I bought both this and "Daily Warm-Ups: Reading, Grade 1" by Melissa Hart. I vastly prefer this one. The stories are interesting and each is a page long (~250 words). Each story has 5 multiple choice questions. 3 of the questions typically come directly from the story, ie word for word (eg story includes: "The thick rubbery eggs protect the babies inside." and the question/answer is "Why are shark eggs thick and rubbery?/to protect the babies inside"). The other 2 can require a little more thought: "This story is mainly about...", and an analogy. The set of answers are generally constructed such that most or all of the answers are plausible if you haven't read and understood the story (or happen to know more than a typical child about the topic already). I feel that the difficulty of reading matches the difficulty of the questions well.In contrast, the Hart book stories are ~100 words long. Each story has 4 multiple choice questions. In almost all cases, the questions come directly from the story. Moreover, the questions/answers tend to be answerable without having ever read the story, just from the knowledge a lot of 1st grader already have, which rather defeats the purpose in my opinion. Example: "Polar bears are found in... a) sunny Florida, b) tropical jungles, c) the freezing Arctic, d) the Pacific Ocean". I feel like there is a mismatch between the difficulty of reading and the difficulty of the questions, i.e. the questions would be too easy for almost any child who is capable of reading the text.

I recommend this book 100%. This book is a great addition to any curriculum. It’s great especially for students who need a bit more practice with reading analysis.

Good learning material and age/grade appropriate word usage. Our 1st grade daughter is an early reader, and we have been alternating different reading comprehension books and online resources to keep her interested. This book is a great addition to our list, highly recommended.