My kids school introduced the AR when my son was in K, and my daughter was in 5th. MOST K kids didn't use it, but my son's K teacher used it for enriching those few kids who were reading WAY above grade level. Except for the challenge in finding good books to fit his age, interest & reading level. I helped figured out that the best books for him that year were the Magic School Bus books, they had a high lexile 450-550L but were short. On the other hand my daughters 5th grade class quickly abandoned using they system because of the difficulty of finding age appropriate books for a class full of gifted readers.
In K as a supplementary teaching program, AR worked fine but by 3rd grade this was not longer an effective or interesting teaching method for him. It was hard to find books to fit his "level", the questions/test because a testing system that works fine for checking the reading comprehension of pictures books doesn't translate well to 200 page chapter books with complex themes.
I have stated in other threads about this, that I feel this system doesn't work well past about the 4/5th grade level (about 700-800 lexile). There are a number of reasons for this. Plus like all teaching methods, AR works well for some kids but certainly not all. And this certainly should NOT be the only method used to teach reading.
Basically I feel the Lexile system while it works OK for "leveling" early readers & early chapter books and can be a useful tool for steering kids to books that will be appropriate. It should not be the only tool for teaching or assessing reading.
Last edited by bluemagic; 01/26/14 02:50 PM.
