Lelah M. Crabbs

Originally published in the homeschool support group newsletter, REACHEast, in November 2008

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Do you have a child who can read independently? Do you wonder what his reading and comprehension levels are? This teaching tool can help you find these answers.

Each of the five books in the non-consumable McCalls-Crabbs reading text contains 78 three-minute reading lessons. Dr. William A. McCall (Professor Emeritus of Education, Teachers College, Columbia University) instructed his graduate students to write these lessons using what words they felt necessary to express their ideas, unlike most readers who have controlled vocabulary. (In 1979, these lessons were dumbed down with controlled vocabulary.) The reading lessons cover numerous intriguing topics in the form of fiction, nonfiction, or nonfiction narrative. A list of multiple-choice questions, which test literal and inferential comprehension, follows each piece. A student records his answers on a student answer sheet or on notebook paper. At the bottom of each lesson page is a reading-level scale with which a teacher can determine the student's reading level.

Book A starts at the 4th-grade reading level, and Book E takes students to the collegiate level. Strong, early readers may begin this program in the middle of first grade or in second grade. For those who need an easier text to start with, the McCall-Harby Test Lessons in Primary Reading (1965) offers easier selections. This booklet contains 30 narrative paragraphs that are followed by yes or no comprehension questions.

Neither of these textbooks contains instructions nor answer keys. However, two guides are available from Spalding Educational International (www.spalding.org) for $12.50 each (The Comprehension Connection User's Guide for McCall-Harby (K-1) and McCall-Crabbs Book A and The Comprehension Connection User's Guide for McCall-Crabbs Books B-E). These contain answer keys, passage analyses, and instructions to teach comprehension skills. The analyses list the type of writing, point of view, topic sentence, and the implied main idea. Teachers will find this useful when they wish to focus on one type of writing. The comprehension guide instructs teachers how to teach their students how to identify a text structure and how to use the five mental actions for comprehension.

For only $2.00, Back Home Industries has a simple, straightforward manual, including answer keys, for Books A-E. It also has a reproducible student answer record sheet, on which a student can write down his answers to questions from ten different lessons and where the teacher can record the student's reading level for each lesson and the average score of the ten lessons. The most valuable part of this four-sheet, photocopied booklet is its “Index to Reading Selection Difficulty,” which the Spalding resources lack. The lessons in each McCalls-Crabb book are not arranged by difficulty. So, Back Home Industries has created this index to help teachers assign reading lessons in an order that becomes more challenging for the student.

My son didn't read fluently until second grade. At that point, I started teaching him how to comprehend a text using the Spalding comprehension skills, and then I let him do some of the McCalls-Harby lessons. He liked them so much that he actually asked to answer the questions. In third grade, I began using the McCall-Crabbs lessons three times a week. After my son completes his three-minute reading, I check his work and discuss with him any questions he might have missed. We both find the little stories enjoyable.
If you are seeking a quality but easy-to-do reading comprehension program, try McCall-Crabbs. But make sure you get the 1961 edition, not the 1979 dumbed-down edition.… (meer)