Students read sentences using the word to identify context clues to meaning. The vocabulary instruction in this lesson is the best I found in any of the basals I reviewed. The lesson uses a fiction text, though expository texts are the principle challenge in fourth grade. Summarizers are to restate important ideas in their own words. No summarization modeling is provided.
Summarization is assigned.
A later reteaching involves essentially the same activities. Phoneme awareness is practiced without instruction, and blending procedures are reduced to finger-sliding while stretching words. Guided practice exercises are uninspired, and first graders are given predictable rather than decodable texts. The one bright spot in this series was the well-crafted vocabulary instruction found in the second book. I would rank this series fourth strongest out of the five series reviewed, i.e., second to last.