Our best-selling Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program offers educators a wonderful tool for increasing reading comprehension and critical thinking skills among students. Whenever Prufrock Press exhibits Jacob's Ladder at education conferences, teachers ask questions about how the program works and whether the program can be used with all students in a mixed-ability classroom. I've prepared this blog entry in hopes of answering some of these questions.

Does Research Support Using the Program With All Students?

Emphatically, yes. Jacob's Ladder was developed at the College of William and Mary as part of a federally funded Department of Education research grant. Although there are many reading programs focused on developmental readers, there are very few research-based reading programs designed to teach advanced reading comprehension skills. Jacob's Ladder fills this gap.

Research conducted using Jacob's Ladder in Title 1 schools shows that the program increases reading comprehension skills for all students in a mixed-ability classroom. The researchers concluded, "when compared to students who used the basal reader only, those students who were exposed to the Jacob's Ladder curriculum showed significant gains in reading comprehension and critical thinking."

For an overview of the research supporting the use of this product, please download What Works: 20 Years of Curriculum Development and Research for Advanced Learners.

What Skill Sets Do the Ladders Represent?

The program is organized around the metaphor of ladders. There are six types of ladders representing different types of reading skills and each ladder has "steps" that represent increasingly difficult variations of the skills represented by the ladder. For example, Ladder A focuses on sequencing, implications, and consequences. At the lowest step of Ladder A, students sequence information found in a reading. At the highest level, students are asked to identify the short-term and long-term consequences of actions and events in a reading.

The types of reading skills addressed by each ladder are listed below:

• Ladder A: sequencing, cause and effect, and consequences and implications;
• Ladder B: identifying key details, classification, and generalizations;
• Ladder C: literary elements, inference, and interpretation of theme or central idea;
• Ladder D: synthesis of information through paraphrasing, summarizing, and creative synthesis;
• Ladder E: understanding emotion, expressing emotion, and using emotion; and
• Ladder F: planning and goal setting, monitoring and assessing, and reflecting.

How do the Readings and Ladders Work?

Each book in the Jacob's Ladder program contains between 8-10 short stories, 7-10 poems, and 4-6 nonfiction selections. Following each reading, a series of activities from the ladders are presented to students. Teachers may choose to have students complete all activities on the ladders or limit students to only certain activities presented. For example, emergent readers may be assigned activities from the lower steps of a ladder, while more advanced readers may be assigned multiple activities from the ladders.

Let's look at an example from Jacob's Ladder: Level 1: After reading one of Aesop's fables, students first encounter Ladder A, which includes the following tasks:

• list the events that occurred in the fable (Rung A1—sequencing),
• build a chart showing the various cause and effect relationships in the fable (Rung A2—cause and effect), and/or
• discuss the long-term consequences of one of the main character's actions (Rung A3—consequences and implications).

Next, from Ladder B, students would be asked to:

• discuss the mental images the fable created in their mind and list the specific details from the tale that supported the images (Rung B1—details),
• identify the actions of one character that could be characterized as helping another character (Rung B2—classifications), and/or
• determine the moral or "lesson" the fable is attempting to deliver (Rung B3—generalization).

Can I Use the Program With Cooperative Learning Groups?

Yes. Although the activities and readings can be done by students individually, Jacob's Ladder is ideal for small groups. The readings and activities may be used in a number of different grouping patterns. The use of small groups provides excellent opportunities for student discussion of the readings and collaborative decisions about the answers to questions posed.

Does the Program Include Assessment Tools?

Yes. Pre- and postassessments are included. The pretests should be administered, scored, and then used to guide student instruction and the selection of readings for varied ability groups. Both the pre- and postassessments, scoring rubric, and sample exemplars for each rubric category and level are included along with exemplars to guide scoring.