does this mean he'll too have to read the books that the other kids in the class will be reading?
It depends on the school and teacher.
Same here. The schools my kids have been in have never restricted what level books the children read as long as they'd been able to show the teacher they'd read the initial set of leveled books in their K-1 classrooms.
I also see the DRA as giving some valuable feedback when children *are* making small mistakes in reading but have a higher level of comprehension. Both of my dds had lower scores on the DRA than would be expected due to their comprehension ability and in both cases, it was an indication that they had a reading challenge that needed to be addressed. My older dd had a vision issue, and my younger dd has a type of associative memory challenge which means that she can comprehend at a much higher level when she listens to audiobooks than she can retain when reading with her eyes. So she listens to audiobooks for comprehension but she still needs to develop her reading skills when reading with her eyes, so to practice that she practices with lower level books than she's capable of comprehending. For a typical child with no challenges, I still think there may be some value in practicing reading skills on books that are below their level of comprehension, things like tracking, not skipping ahead etc. I also suspect that for some of our gifted children who had reading challenges might slip through the cracks until a bit later in school if they didn't have an assessment such as the DRA, simply because they were able to get around reading blocks by putting together contextual clues.
polarbear
