Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Leveling off?

Hi All.

DD7 is at the end of first grade. Overall, we are satisfied with the school she attends, her teacher, and her gifted program.

Yet, this last marking period, her reading scores leveled off. She started out first grade reading at a 4th grade level, last marking period she was at 4.9, and again she is at 4.9. Her teacher included a note saying not to worry, that kids who are this high often level off. Is that the case?

I don't know if she is just not getting reading material that is at a challenging enough level? There are many kids in her class that fall into the gifted range, so I would guess that she is in a reading group with higher level readers.

Or maybe it has to do with what she chooses to read?

Any ideas/advice is appreciated.
Thanks!

I guess it would be worth it to confirm that she is in the highest reading group, and to see what level the books for that group are - if they are 3.4 for example, then everyone else is probably congradulating themselves that 1st graders are so above level. So there could be many gifted readers and yet none who can keep up with your dd. Or they may be ready and able, and yet the books might be pitched at an unchallenging level.

I 'love' those 'don't worry it happens to lots of kids' comments - I'll bet if you stopped feeding them then lots of kids would level off on their weight gain too but no one wants to try this and find out. But I do think that part of being human is to be more alert to singular events than common ones.

Love andMore Love,
Grinity

There are several possibilities for this observation, IMO:

1) child isn't being assessed at a level commensurate with ability. (So she's at the ceiling-- and was last marking period, too)

2) child has learned that to fit in, she needs to act like other children, and is choosing reading material that makes her fit in better with peers whose readiness level is lower than hers,

3) child doesn't have any access to reading materials at her readiness level,

4) child has discovered that higher level reading materials which ARE available to her do not have the same interest level for her, given her age.

Of those, only 4) is really something not to worry about, in my experience. The others all indicate some degree of poor fit educationally, and are worrisome.

I've definitely observed factors 1, 2, and 4 with my daughter.

There is a way to mitigate item 4; go backwards in time and choose children's literature with publication dates in the 1960's or earlier. There, reading levels up to lexiles as high as 1000 or so is aimed at children who are very definitely pre-adolescent. This is a very distinct problem with the general trend of children's literature in the past thirty years; there has been a lot of focus on RELUCTANT readers and those with poor foundational skills, which led to a lot of material with low lexile levels and higher age interest levels. My first grader could easily have read Twilight, but she (appropriately, IMO) had no interest in doing so.

She was interested in books written for children, like L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz series, or J.M. Barry's Peter Pan. She just didn't know that they existed until I started steering her toward those books.

Next time you are in your child's classroom, take a look at the class library and ask about the range of lexile levels. It might be very enlightening.

Ya, I am kind of thinking that she is beyond the others in her class. I'm feeling bad that I haven't checked out her reading group and the school year is almost over (1 quarter left).

I'm going to leave her teacher an e-mail and see if I can observe within the next week or so. DD has told me the names of the kids in her reading group- and they are all bright kids, to be sure. But I do think DD is still ahead, and can handle more sophisticated reading material. Right now, at home she is reading "Tales of a Fourth-Grade Nothing" as well as "The Diary of Anne Frank" - totally different types of books, but they fit DD to a "T". "Tales" she reads again and again and is an "easy" book for her, I think she is on her 3rd time through. "Anne Frank" she reads with me at bedtime (maybe an entry or 2) and we spend a lot of time discussing both vocabulary and history.

Thanks for your input, Grinity.

Howlerkarma - Yes! DD loved "Wizard of Oz" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"! I have donated a few books to the classroom library, but probably could donate more. I am wondering about 1 and 2, as well. Thanks.

For us it was this, but ir regards to not enjoying reading time in school:I had to talk to our ds that he is not limited to classroom books or school library, but should feel free to take any book from home to school. His teacher was ok with that. Now there are several other kids who are reading our J. Verne books in his classroom.

It's not too late to get a better reading placement and you are early for getting a good placement for next year!

for comparison, my son's school taught Anne Frankas a 6 week project in 6th grade. I think you will be hard pressed to find other 1st graders who are read for that academically or emotionally.

Excellent advice from HM regarding 'pre-1960 books'
some exceptions that are 'great for young teens - preread to see if you think they are good for your 7 year old'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Lowry especially The Giver and Gossamer
http://www.ursulakleguin.com/Index-WesternShore.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Wynne_Jones espescially Crestomansi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Tolan
we liked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Claidi_Journals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamora_Pierce

Enjoy!
Grinity

This I why I love reading Grinity's posts! Complete common sense.

May I ask how you are determining her reading level? Sometimes, the tests only determine up to a certain level, so if she hit the celiling, the highest it will report is the level it stopped calculating at.

I would worry about HOW she is reading when she is reading than to what any number would tell you she is at, for the reason mentioned above.

I had a teacher tell me DD's wordcount per minute only to find out that she left out that there weren't any more words on the page left to read, so it wasn't a true picture of her ability.

Priceless! One size doesn't fit all!

When DS now 8 was in K, he tested at 4.2 at the beginning of the year. The next quarter he was higher still at 4.9. The rest of the year he stayed level. I too questioned this, but as he was allowed to supply his own reading material that part wasn't an issue.

A very wise teacher put forth the idea that he was busy learning other things, filling in the gaps, making monstrous leaps in math and probably wasn't focused too much on free reading. She suggested that I let it lie for a bit and see what happened.

It turned out to be excellent advice. The following year, he tested in at 7.3. Over the last two years, we've had a few more of these lulls in various subjects but he always rebounds in a big way.

I would consider letting it lie for a bit. Even if it does turn out to be something, she is far enough ahead that a little lull isn't going to affect the long term.

Shari - I was going to say the same thing. When DD now 8 was in kinder/1st grade the same thing happened to her too. Her reading level had been determined by AR testing and STAR reading tests and the books she selected for those tests were not at her reading level, but rather at her interest level. (Her interest in the illustrations in the books at the time. ) For her if the book's pictures were well done it was a much better book and much more worth her while than a book more at her reading level, but with lower quality pictures. Her ability and interest in art and illustrations is now stronger than ever, so I think she was too busy investigating her new found artistic ability than in improving an already amazing reading level.
Her level has increased quite a bit since then (to the point that her teacher had to call the test makers to get help understanding her comprehension results on a recent test because they were so high she was sure there was a problem with them. ).

This is why our kids need really good GT specialists. This is outside the norm of the overall students. Would a teacher tell a special ed students's parents that their children will "level off"?

I'm glad that DS's teachers at least have the sense to have him start over at the beginning and keep counting when he finishes the page! Sheesh!



Love it! Must remember this.

Yes, sadly, all the time! Despite the opinion of numerous "experts", the development of individuals with Down syndrome does not reach a 'ceiling' or 'plateau' in adolescence. Like everyone else, they continue to learn into adult life and to grow as people, if given the opportunity to do so. The so-called 'ceiling' discussed in past literature was almost certainly the result of the lack of medical care and educational and social experience.

Ah --- so sorry to hear that this is true. How preposterous, and yet, so many things are preposterous.

They used the STAR test. I think it was the same problem as Kerry mentioned.

Still investigating. I am meeting with her teacher after spring break.

Also, I do think DD has been concentrating a lot on music lately. Her piano teacher mentioned that she thinks DD is having a huge cognitive leap- she is playing some challenging pieces very well. Also, her sight reading has soared. She is intrinsically motivated to practice right now, and probably spends more time at the piano than reading books. So that may be part of it as well.

I think one mistake we make is assuming that reading grows at a nice continual ramp. What I have seen with my kids is much more like a step function. They do level off or plateau, until they suddenly jump.

Now is that real leveling? No. They are definitely absorbing a ton at that level before the next leap.

My oldest went into K reading at about a 3rd to 4th grade level. She stayed there for quite a while, and really only went up a bit. During the summer between 1rst and second grade she leaped to a 7th grade level.

My other child was reading at a 2nd grade level at 4, and was reading at a 3rd grade level by K. She leveled off there, and went on a chapter book strike for a year. The summer between K and 1rst grade, she made the next step in her step function, and was reading at a minimum of a md 5th grade level.

I think when we have kids that grow in more a step function fashion, we think when they are at the bottom of the cliff, that they are not doing anything. They are. They are absorbing a ton, until they suddenly leap a few grade levels.

I would not be surprised if your daughter's reading level makes a jump to 6th-7th grade at some point.

At least your school does test reading level lol
Our school doesn't even know what that means.
Well either laugh or cry right : )

i know it may sound ignorant, what is this reading at 3.4 or 4.9 etc, in my DD school they use guided reading levels (listed as A-Z)
Can somebody educate me to correlate numbers with alphabets

thanks

A rating of "3.4" means that the book is at a level of the 4th month of 3rd grade. The rating systems (eg Renaissance Learning and its AR Bookfinder) supposedly reflect what grades a book is suited to. They seem to assign their ratings by scanning the books, calculating mean sentence length, word length, syllables per word, and so on. You probably get the idea.

I'm dubious about these systems for a lot of reasons. Renaissance Learning calls itself a company providing "advanced technology for data-driven schools." But literature isn't data-driven or the product of "advanced technology;" it's creative and the product of an author's vision (industrial chapter books excepted, but I suppose they aren't literature). I don't like the idea of reducing literary works like Old Yeller or Huckleberry Finn to data-driven numbers for inclusion on a checklist of numerically-appropriate books to be consumed during 30 minutes of Sustained Silent Reading.

Okay, color me cynical.

That said, the system seems to work very well with those industrial chapter books I mentioned (e.g. the Daisy Meadows fairy stories). These books are probably written by committee according to a formula. There are a lot of books like that out there. In that respect, the labels can help as a rough guide to whether or not a book is at a child's reading level (though reading the first two or three pages is probably just as effective).

My son read Dune for school last year (6th grade), and AR and Lexile Levels both gave it a rating somewhere around a fifth-grade reading level. Anyone who's read Dune knows it wasn't written for fifth-graders. This kind of mismatch seems to happen more often with real books than with the industrial ones.

HTH

Val

Val, I'm jealous! My DS only got about a third into Dune and then lost interest

But at least I can report that scholoastic's website's 'book wizard'

http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tb...matchallpartial&Ne=1314&Ntt=Dune



At Lexile's website I see Dune as 800L, but Harry Potter and the Socerer's Stone at 880L - which I don't get at all!

I also found this interesting

So if your child read and understood 100% of a book, then they aren't judged to be at that Lexile level, if that makes sense...
Grinity

Dune is hard! My son only got through it because it was for a class. I had to help him at first.

Yannam,

These are grade-level equivalents. 3.4 would be third grade, fourth month. 4.9 would be fourth grade, ninth month.

Hope that helps.

I understood about number part, I know little bit about alphabets part too, but many forgot to answer about existence of any correlation tables, say if my dd is p level according to guided reading level, what is that means in numbers?

yannam - go to Scholastic's website. You can see that a "p" is somewhere in 3rd grade level. My daughter's school uses those letter levels for report cards, except that they only provide testing for a range that is 2 grades above. So, the teacher just marks the highest level attained and then makes a note "student is beyond level Q" for example.

Does that help?