Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What's my child's reading level?

It's probably a common problem that parents struggle with- what level of book should my child be reading? The school caps their assessments at one grade-level above the student's current grade, so it's not very valuable. I actually have a background in education and reading specifically, so I know that there is no easy answer to the question. There are sometimes variables in fiction vs. nonfiction, comprehension, inferencing skills, written comprehension skills etc. I could determine my child's reading level, or a rough approximation, if I had access to the assessments used at school, but I'm not teaching currently, and he's now above the level I used to teach.

I noticed I could possibly use reading a-z to get access to texts and running records. Has anyone used it? Does anyone else have a program, or resource they'd recommend for determining reading level? I'm looking for something more than reading a list of 10 words, which really only tests decoding.

I should have added, my goal here is just to pick some books for the summer that will slightly nudge him to try new vocabulary, slightly longer length, new topics etc. Thanks for your help!

there was a great list going around on the pt elist. i'm sure someone can post??

My personal take on this is that for children who are already reading, the best way to build upon their skills are to find a new favorite series that is somewhere between their instructional level and their comfort zone and to let them experience something completely new in real life.

When it comes to selecting books for DD5, her own interest seems to outweigh reading level, hands down. I suspect that what your DS needs is to find something that captures his imagination.

My young child I used nightly reading to him as observation about his level. I gaged his comprehension and interest and even ability to decode (randomly I would get a tickle in my throat and would need for him to read a page out loud while I drank water. I usually read one chapter and said good night. Sometimes the next morning the book was done and if I wanted to know the end I needed to finish it by myself. Sometime his behavior let me know he wasn't ready for a book level. He wouldn't stay awake for The lion, witch and the wardrobe in the summer after first grade. I was sure if we read it together he would read the rest of the series by himself. But I over estimated his readiness. Two years later a teacher recommended the series and he devoured them and pretended that I had never suggested them.

Hmm. This may be heretical, but we have never really concerned ourselves with reading "levels." We take the child to the children's section of the library and wander around with him, letting him pick out books but also pick out some for the sack that we think he might enjoy, with an eye to variety. Lather, rinse, repeat the next weekend.

This has worked very well. Both boys are reading several years past grade level and more importantly, they are good at picking out books themselves.

A lot of my feelings about reading are driven by the fact that I was an early reader that just got sent to the library for the first three years of school, and I feel like I missed learning that I needed. My daughter was an early reader and I don't see much reading instruction in school for her either. Based on my experience I believe that kids need to do more than just read if they're going to get the comprehension, vocabulary and inference skills, etc. that hit them at their personal growth level--they need to discuss what they read, and I don't believe that advanced readers get much of that at school.

You don't say where your child is in reading. I used the Scholastic chart. When my daughter was very young and learning to read, I had her read books to me and it was easy to see if it was too hard/too easy. I think I did that up through level K-ish? Once she started really reading I think there's a place in there where parents don't know what to do. She went from K-ish to Captain Underpants and I had no idea what she was getting out of it, but she didn't have the reading stamina to read full chapters out loud to me. So what we did was let her read whatever she wanted (we skimmed for content we didn't want her exposed to) and then we read to her at night, with her reading paragraphs or pages out loud, like others suggest.

Once they've actually learned to read, if the kids are reading above level and don't get much reading instruction in school, having parents read out loud at night is a great way for it to happen. You can have conversations about the book and make sure the child understands the vocabulary and ideas and all that stuff you can easily skip over when you are just reading a book alone.

Right now my husband is reading the Susan Cooper series to her. She loves it, but if she were reading it alone, there is so much she wouldn't catch.

She also reads whatever she wants during the day. It kind of drives me crazy because all these series books are predictable and it just gets to be like TV sitcoms. Right now she's into these Warrior cat clan books and there are like 90 of them!! So every once in a while I take her to the bookstore award winning shelf and encourage her to pick something else, but reading at night is where the good books always come in because the rule is that we all three have to like them.

I still use that Scholastic chart to get some warnings. Recently she read a book called "Walk two Moons" and the chart rating didn't match the text. It seemed easier. So I looked into it and learned that the structure was complex and that's why the reading level was high. That gave me the opportunity to check in and make sure she understood the structure (she did). But the symbolism was something else--she really didn't appreciate it the way a fifth or sixth grader would. I wouldn't have looked into that book if the chart rating didn't surprise me, so I think those things are valuable. But for what it is worth, if we're reading as a family at night, I don't care if she doesn't fully get the symbolism in a beautiful book. She'll appreciate it more next year because she will be more ready, not based on what they do at school but on what we read together at night.

I wouldn't worry about your child's specific reading level unless you suspect that something is a struggle. In my opinion, reading should be about joy, not about being challenged.

We do what ConnectingDots does in letting the children pick out their own books. In early elementary with my daughter it was a real mix. She would have a few thick chapter books about topics that interested her (usually some kind of fantasy), a few graphic novels and some non-fiction about her interest du jour like the weather, different countries. She might even throw a picture book into the mix if something on display caught her eye. I noticed that she naturally picked harder books as her comprehension level went up. If she mistakenly picked a book that was too hard she would usually put it down after a few pages.

I pick the books for my son - if left to himself, he reads encyclopedias, Guinness book of records, Ripley's Believe it or Not, Lego catalogs etc for fun.
I pick a very eclectic mix of books and fill a bin and leave it around. I don't care about the reading level, just that there is a mix of genres and difficulty levels in there. He likes biographies and funny books the best. So, he reads far above his level in those categories. I think that there is no need for a reading level to pick out books - just get some from the library and see what clicks and what does not. That should give you a good starting point. I also sometimes ask the librarian at the public library to suggest reading material - I tell her what the latest books my son read were and based on that, she figures out what his level and interests are.

My kids' elementary school also caps their testing to one grade level above. I've pretty much given up trying to argue with them since my older child was in 3rd grade. He was marked as "reading at the end of 2nd grade level" at the beginning of 2nd grade, while reading history books written for high school students. In 3rd grade and later on, he would read every single book in the classroom collection, usually 200-300 of them, in the first week of school. So we always just let him pack books to school.

In middle school it was the real problem, because the spread of reading levels was huge at that point and the teachers weren't doing a good job differentiating.

In high school when the advanced kids read Shakespeare and Dante, it's not a problem anymore...