Reading isn't a school subject after age 8 at school - it is assumed that all children can read by then, and the focus moves on to studying literature - so I don't really know what people mean by "grade 6 reading" etc.
I can tell you what I meant. It was the general level (or levels, as mostly listed ranges) of the books my son read for pleasure combined with what I assigned. It seems important to list a general reading level in order to have an understanding of that aspect of the child's academic functioning.
Why?
(To be slightly more helpful: once decoding is no longer an issue, which I suppose is what DS's school is placing at 8 for a mixed-ability class, I would expect that the fiction a child enjoys reading is determined by sense of humour, presence of characters with whom the child enjoys empathising, degree of suspense enjoyed, etc.; the science factual material is determined by scientific background knowledge; the political opinion by exposure to political thought, etc. Lumping this together into a "reading level" seems unlikely to be practical or helpful.)
I tend to agree.
There is no age of students such that he is just like the average student of that age, even if you take writing out of the equation.
This, exactly. I'll go even further and point out that there is no age of MG students who are just like PG ones, either.
It's the underlying problem with acceleration OR enrichment as differentiation. There just
aren't enough other students "like" any child at very high LOG (and by "like" here, I mean sharing both ABILITY and
INTERESTS with such children).
DD has been more or less reading on an adult level since she was about 7-ish years of age. And I don't just mean the newspaper and media sources, which aren't truly at a post-secondary level. I mean
real adult literature, too. Dickens, Shakespeare, Poe, etc. The stuff commonly taught in college Lit coursework and good 11th-12th grade English Lit. But she mostly wasn't that INTERESTED in that kind of literature as a steady diet. George MacDonald and Tolkein were lovely, but there just isn't that much of that kind of thing when you read at the rate that she does. She likes
clever writing and humor.
Acceleration as a means to meet needs only goes so far. It's the only way to
ease a super-poor fit... but it's not what I'd call "adequate" to make it a GOOD one, if that makes sense.
