Full Description

I would highly recommend The Reading Detective Club to you and your students. I think you’ll have fun.
—Talking Points

"Readers are a lot like detectives," says Debra Goodman. "We use clues from the author's text. We use strategies to try to figure out what's going on. We make up theories to solve the mystery of each text, and we check out our theories as we read along." Thus, Goodman invites us to join The Reading Detective Club, a unique new book of "mystery cases" that are actually reading strategy lessons for third through eighth graders and their teachers.

Here are two engaging books in one: a smart professional book for teachers and a fun "nonworkbook" for students. The teacher section offers a comprehensive overview of the reading process, with step-by-step instructions for sponsoring a Reading Detective Club, analyses of each case, and discussions of topics such as second-language readers and dialect variations. The student section features a series of reproducible mystery cases presented by student-detectives Jacob, Michele, and Scott. Children are encouraged to solve cases—and come to understand their own approaches to literacy—by exploring the meaning clues, language (grammar) clues, and graphic clues in printed texts.

Central to The Reading Detective Club is the importance of miscue analysis as a vital assessment tool. Teachers will appreciate the accessible, practical advice for appropriating miscue analysis in the classroom. Most of all, students will be reassured and inspired to learn that the detective work they do to understand language is proof that they are already smart thinkers and readers.

Additional Resource Information

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Contents

Contents:
Teacher Book: 1. What Is a Miscue? 2. Goals of The Reading Detective Club 3. Readers and Detectives: What's the Connection? 4. Supporting the Principles of a Whole Language Curriculum 5. Teaching Language in Context: Strategy Lessons 6. Tips for Club Sponsors 7. Tips for Teachers 8. Overview of Reading Detective Club Cases Student Book: I. Reading Detectives Use Clues and Strategies 1. The Case of the Missing Word 2. The Case of the Messy Hands 3. The Case of the Torn Page 4. The Case of the Gluey Page II. Let's Take a Guess 5. The Case of the Goldfish III. Everybody Makes Mistakes 6. The Case of the Missing Mom 7. The Case of the Damaged Books 8. The Case of the Smashed Chicken 9. The Kas of the Stoopid Chekin IV. Playing with Language 10. The Case of the Norful Snig 11. The Shrag of the Glumpy Frinkle V. You Are What You Read, or You Read What You Are 12. The Case of the Missing Titles 13. The Case of My Own Miscue Investigations: 1. What Have You Read Today? 2. Easy as Falling Off a Bicycle 3. Studying Our Own Miscues