Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program

The Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program develops reading comprehension and critical thinking skills in high-ability learners. It moves students through a scaffolded inquiry process from basic understanding to critical analyses of texts, using a field-tested method developed by the Center for Gifted Education at William & Mary. 

This supplemental reading program is available for grades K-8. It implements targeted readings from short stories, poetry, essays, and nonfiction, that link reading comprehension and analysis with content disciplines. Tasks are organized into different ladders which focus on a different skill set necessary for success, covering language arts standards such as sequencing, determining cause and effect, classifying, inferencing, and recognizing main ideas.

Also included within each book is an overview of the goals and objectives of the Jacob's Ladder tasks and suggestions for implementation, giving every teacher the tools needed to promote successful reading comprehension.

In addition to the teacher's guides, optional companion student workbooks are also available, featuring more space for student responses that make checking and providing feedback on student work easier than ever.

Each set of student workbooks includes 5 student booklets, divided by grade level and area of emphasis included in the teacher guides. Each complete set includes the teacher's guide and 5 copies of each companion student workbook.

There are also two extensions to the original program—the Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program: Nonfiction and the Affective Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program.

Jacob’s Ladder Reading Comprehension Program: Nonfiction focuses specifically on supporting advanced students’ nonfiction abilities related to essays, articles, comparison documents, infographics, and other nonfiction texts. Each book includes high-interest readings, ladders to increase reading skill development, and easy-to-implement instructions.

Affective Jacob's Ladder Reading Comprehension Program focuses specifically on supporting advanced students’ social emotional needs through the discussion of reading selections in the following genres: short stories and media, poetry, and speeches, essays, and biographies.

Integrating reading comprehension and analysis skills with affective and social-emotional needs, the ladders moves students from lower to higher level skills of self-awareness, metacognition, and goal setting, while asking them to apply themes, character or real-life experiences, and lessons from texts to their own lives.