High-Interest Nonfiction: 49 Fascinating Short Stories & Reading Comprehension Activities is a reading and comprehension based program containing history and science stories followed by literal and interpretive comprehension questions to engage a student’s understanding of what was read. The product includes a 2 inch, 3 ring binder and a CD containing the contents of the binder in pdf format, a skills chart, a reading level chart, a word count chart, and a complete list of Common Core State Standards. The program covers 49 short stories with corresponding comprehension questions and thought engaging activities. The listed price for this product is $59.99.

The target audience is students between a 3-5 grade reading level. The interest level is 2-12. The program would be appropriate for either classroom or homeschool use. The teaching method used aims to “ensure that what a student learns, how he or she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he or she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning.” Differentiated learning seeks to appeal to the various learning styles of students, their interests, and skill level. This would be a great fit for a homeschool parent wishing to teach various grade and ability levels.

I used this program with my 3^rd grade daughter. I really liked the set-up of the program. Each story, on average, is four paragraphs in length. Preview words are listed at the top of the story page. These words may be unfamiliar in pronunciation and/or meaning for the student. After each story the student will answer multiple choice comprehension questions and various activities including: short answer, fact or opinion, vocabulary, research, classifying information, finding the main idea, and critical thinking. The story content is enough to tell a story without being so long that the student becomes disengaged. The variety of comprehension and skill based activities ensures that the student has a proper understanding of the story text as well as engaging the student in a wide variety of skills. My daughter was able to read the stories on her own. She was able to work through many of the activities on her own, but did require help with some of the more advanced skill activities. Overall, my daughter really enjoyed this program. If I could add on addition to the program, it would be definitions of the preview words.

I would highly recommend this reading program to others. The program is all-inclusive and provides the student with high interest stories and research-based activities.

-Product review by Jennifer Ladewig, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, October, 2016