Gifted Bulletin Board

Welcome to the Gifted Issues Discussion Forum.

We invite you to share your experiences and to post information about advocacy, research and other gifted education issues on this free public discussion forum.
CLICK HERE to Log In. Click here for the Board Rules.

Links


Learn about Davidson Academy Online - for profoundly gifted students living anywhere in the U.S. & Canada.

The Davidson Institute is a national nonprofit dedicated to supporting profoundly gifted students through the following programs:

  • Fellows Scholarship
  • Young Scholars
  • Davidson Academy
  • THINK Summer Institute

  • Subscribe to the Davidson Institute's eNews-Update Newsletter >

    Free Gifted Resources & Guides >

    Who's Online Now
    0 members (), 591 guests, and 14 robots.
    Key: Admin, Global Mod, Mod
    Newest Members
    streble, DeliciousPizza, prominentdigitiz, parentologyco, Smartlady60
    11,413 Registered Users
    March
    S M T W T F S
    1 2
    3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    10 11 12 13 14 15 16
    17 18 19 20 21 22 23
    24 25 26 27 28 29 30
    31
    Previous Thread
    Next Thread
    Print Thread
    Page 2 of 3 1 2 3
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2011
    Posts: 5,181
    I'm with the others-- it's ridiculous, and even a cursory examination of the lexile scoring of any series of well-known works shows this in a hurry.

    I refused to submit my DD to "lexile" assessments after the thing stupidly proposed that my then 6yo DD should be reading...


    Tess of the D'Ubervilles, Madame Bovary... etc.

    (laughably, to be sure)

    Yeah. I don't think so.

    She reads what she likes, and she has since she learned. The last I tracked her reading was when she was about seven, but she was regularly reading 500-1500 pages a month-- all of it above grade level. She doesn't seem to have any trouble now that she's taking AP Literature as a 13yo, by the way (unlike some of her conventionally-aged but still bright classmates, I might add).

    I like the technique of asking the teacher "what should I do with this information? I need help with this."

    That's exactly what I did, too-- and the teacher laughed WITH ME over just how stupid this kind of thing is when applied to HG+ children who are avid readers.


    Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.
    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posts: 615
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posts: 615
    I agree with what others are saying -- at some point reading has to stop being about learning to be a better reader, and be just about . . . reading. Reading is a tool. For learning stuff. Once someone is reading at a college level, improving their reading level should just not be part of the agenda at all.

    Also, a teacher who thinks going from 250 to 248 is a statistically significant drop doesn't know what she's talking about.

    Joined: Jan 2010
    Posts: 263
    A
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    A
    Joined: Jan 2010
    Posts: 263
    Originally Posted by CAMom
    My 9 year old DYS has a lexile from MAP of 1350-1475. There is literally nothing that is age appropriate AND interesting. I do not think he should be reading about the history of Jack the Ripper from a college level perspective.

    My dd was in about that Lexile range at the same age. A search for "humor" in that range in the online list produced a single scholarly treatise on humor, one that looked incredibly boring. So we've just not bothered with dwelling on her Lexile range. She is now 13yo and still reads a huge amount, most of it "below her Lexile level," but she enjoys it all immensely.

    Joined: Feb 2009
    Posts: 407
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Feb 2009
    Posts: 407
    We had the same problem with our daughter. I actually pleaded for her to read lower lexile works. I figured she could then read whatever she needed to read or liked to read. She was reading so many years above her grade level (at least five years). She was done with reading comprehension at that point.

    I had to get special permission to have her read what others were reading - mainly for social reasons.

    Last edited by Ellipses; 02/04/13 10:56 AM.
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 143
    P
    Pru Offline
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    P
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 143
    DD9's Lexile in 2nd grade was higher than in 4th grade. Go figure. It's a rough guide at best.

    What we do is let her have access to anything she wants to read. Her teacher did this as well in 3rd grade. Instead of her reading stuff at her Lexile level, it usually ends up being grade-level stuff like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and the "Goddess Girl" series. She is not voracious in that she is very particular about what she reads, especially if it contains content that upsets her.

    Then we have her try bigger books that are in the upper end of her range. This is hit or miss but in the past few months, thanks to public domain books on her Kindle, she has read and enjoyed unabridged versions of:

    Little Women
    Little Men
    The Secret Garden
    Grimm's Fairy Tales
    Treasure Island

    I am also encouraging her to use the Kindle's built-in dictionary function whenever she hits a word she doesn't know, but this is proving a challenge to get her to do it consistently.

    Joined: Sep 2011
    Posts: 3,363
    P
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    P
    Joined: Sep 2011
    Posts: 3,363
    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    I agree with what others are saying -- at some point reading has to stop being about learning to be a better reader, and be just about . . . reading. Reading is a tool. For learning stuff. Once someone is reading at a college level, improving their reading level should just not be part of the agenda at all.

    Also, a teacher who thinks going from 250 to 248 is a statistically significant drop doesn't know what she's talking about.

    ITA! Honestly, it surprises me that lexiles would still be used as a tool for selecting books in 7th grade for *any* student (unless they were in a remedial reading program) - but I'm also coming from a background where reading levels weren't really used at all once my kids learned to read, with one exception (my youngest dd is in a different school than my older two, more traditional, and they use AR to select *part* of the books they read independently). My ds was reading and understanding college-level science etc texts bin early elementary. We too had a really tough time choosing fiction books for a short while (and I do wish I'd thought it through enough to realize there would be a chapter on reproduction organs before buying him the college-level anatomy book when he was 7... )... but what we did was just let him choose what he wanted to read - and he didn't choose fiction until around 4th grade when other kids started reading things like Warriors etc - and we let him read the same things other kids his age were reading and he loved them. I don't think it stymied his development of reading skills at all - he could already read very well! What it did do was help him see that reading could be for FUN and enjoyment... and I think that's something that you really have to balance with trying to find appropriately leveled books. I think most of us adults who love to read simply for the sake of reading don't think twice before picking up a book that is technically below the level we're capable of reading - so why should our kids not be able to?

    Anyway, fwiw, my ds reads so fast that he runs out of books to read quickly... so I have spent time digging around for fiction books for him to read. He's in 7th grade, and what I've been doing this year is picking books from the AP Lit lists, as well as other interesting books I see listed on Hoagies etc. If it's a book I haven't read, I take a quick look through reviews online to see if it's something I think he'd enjoy or doesn't contain themes I'd rather he not be exposed to yet. He's really enjoyed the classics on these lists - but to be honest, I have no idea what the lexile level is on anything he's reading.

    Best wishes,

    polarbear

    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posts: 615
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    Joined: Mar 2010
    Posts: 615
    Oh, one more thing. I'm an academic, I read academic writing all the time. And I sometimes encounter writing so complex that it pushes my comprehension abilities. You know what we call that in the biz? BAD WRITING. And I bet it would have a lexile score through the roof.

    That's the problem with using lexile scores beyond the early levels -- it turns difficult-to-comprehend writing into a virtue for its own sake. It's a perversion of the whole purpose of skillful written communication.

    Joined: Jan 2012
    Posts: 137
    S
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    S
    Joined: Jan 2012
    Posts: 137
    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    Oh, one more thing. I'm an academic, I read academic writing all the time. And I sometimes encounter writing so complex that it pushes my comprehension abilities. You know what we call that in the biz? BAD WRITING. And I bet it would have a lexile score through the roof.

    That's the problem with using lexile scores beyond the early levels -- it turns difficult-to-comprehend writing into a virtue for its own sake. It's a perversion of the whole purpose of skillful written communication.



    Meg: You. Are. Awesome.


    Stacey. Former high school teacher, back in the corporate world, mom to 2 bright girls: DD12 & DD7.
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    U
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    U
    Joined: Aug 2010
    Posts: 3,428
    Quote
    And I sometimes encounter writing so complex that it pushes my comprehension abilities. You know what we call that in the biz? BAD WRITING. And I bet it would have a lexile score through the roof.

    That's the problem with using lexile scores beyond the early levels -- it turns difficult-to-comprehend writing into a virtue for its own sake. It's a perversion of the whole purpose of skillful written communication.

    Yes. Yes! YES!

    Joined: Dec 2009
    Posts: 250
    S
    Member
    Offline
    Member
    S
    Joined: Dec 2009
    Posts: 250
    And yes again!

    I scored college level reading comp sometime in the primary grades. It would have been a joke to try to get me to read actual adult literature then. Just good books, classics, silly stuff, amazing themes, etc were what I enjoyed and learned from. I read a LOT but realistic contemporary fiction was always lowest on my list, until actual college. A good reader should have exposure and then read for pleasure. It really will take care of itself.

    Page 2 of 3 1 2 3

    Moderated by  M-Moderator 

    Link Copied to Clipboard
    Recent Posts
    Testing with accommodations
    by aeh - 03/27/24 01:58 PM
    Quotations that resonate with gifted people
    by indigo - 03/27/24 12:38 PM
    For those interested in astronomy, eclipses...
    by indigo - 03/23/24 06:11 PM
    California Tries to Close the Gap in Math
    by thx1138 - 03/22/24 03:43 AM
    Gifted kids in Illinois. Recommendations?
    by indigo - 03/20/24 05:41 AM
    Powered by UBB.threads™ PHP Forum Software 7.7.5