Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion How rare

The Wimpy Kid series have accelerated reader ratings ranging from 5.2 to 5.8 and lexile measures of 950 to 1060. This does make them 5th grade books. Kind of (there are plenty of different ways to map grade level expectations to AR/Lexile, most of them slightly contradictory: http://library.springbranchisd.com/sbisd_library/reading_levels_comparison_chart.htm).

They are also short, clocking 3.0 AR point each (or about 20,000 words) which makes them sort of HiLo books -- they are harder than they look, but because they are short slower readers will be able to enjoy them.


But Percy Jackson *is* a 4th grade book -- the Lightning Thief has an AR rating of 4.7 and a lexile measure of 740. The difference is the length, over four times longer than the Wimpy Kid books.

I have to say that I don't completely trust these various rating systems. I find it odd that the Percy Jackson books are consider 4th grade while the Wimpy Kid books are 5th grade, especially when you compare them to other fifth grade books like Chronicle of Narnia and the early Harry Potter books.

Half of the second graders in DD/DS class last year were addicted to the Wimpy Kid books and reading them early in the school year.

I reviewed an excerpt of one of the Diary books and also found it easier than expected based on the Lexile rating. I've noticed plenty of other discrepancies with other books too. I consider the Lexile ratings to be only very rough indicators of reading level.

It really depends on where you live and keeping in mind that not all "fifth grade books" are created equal. The Wimpy Kid series I would say not that rare. If it were Harry Potter or Chronicles of Narnia, I would say kind of rare. There appears to be an extremely wide range of reading ability in K through 2nd grade, partly but not completely correlated to "giftedness". Even among my own children, the range narrows and widens depending on exactly at which point you compare.

DS8 was reading DoWK @ 6 but he also was reading Tom Sawyer, Robinson Crusoe, The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor, Pinocchio, and Dr. Doolittle.

When he was being tested @ 6.5, the psychologist said Chapter books were a maturity boundary as opposed to a intellectual boundary even among gifted children

I consider the ratings on these books to be a good example of why Lexiles and AR ratings are flawed. IMO, you just can't realistically claim that these are 5th-grade books on a par with the first Harry Potter, the Lightning Thief, etc. I don't just mean "because they're sophomoric." They just don't require as much of a reader--indeed, they are designed to hook reluctant readers.

This is not to say that your kid is not a really advanced reader, though. What else is she reading?

FWIW, I would say 80-90% of the 2nd graders DD knows, designated gifted or not, have read this series. Most are bright, though. It is a pretty typical third grade read, I think?

Regardless of whether Diary of a Wimpy Kid is "truly" a 5th grade book, it's advanced for a first grade student.

I think it is an expectations thing. Our kids can generally read ahead and they also get the humor.

But we forget how many of their peers do not read that well in grades 1, 2 and even 3.

We know a develop challenged girl at the beach, a month older than DD and she did K twice, so is currently in grade 1. She is promoted to grade 2 (NJ) because she is starting to read words. I was rather shocked that she would be promoted. The math is also poor. DD's class has multiplicatin and division in grade 2, so I do not know how this kid will manage in grade 2 but she cannot be the only one reading at that level.

Ren

This is a sidetrack, but developmentally disabled or LD kids can't be held back grades forever with the hopes that they will eventually catch up. It is far better to go ahead and promote them and have them enrolled in special ed classes to remediate their LDs as best as possible. Some kids may never catch up. They can't stay in school forever.

Re whether DWK is a 5th grade book, I don't know. The relevance of that discussion is how rare reading it in 1st is, which is the original topic of the thread. I did get the impression that my dd who was reading HP & the Goblet of Fire at the end of 1st and going into 2nd was reading significantly better than most of the kids in her grade, but I do think that is legitimately a book that one would expect to be read in late elementary.

The kids whose parents gushed about how advanced their kids were in reading and how they were reading at 4th or 5th grade levels at age 6 or 7 and whose kids were reading Junie B. Jones were more likely falling victim to poor book leveling systems. I didn't get the impression that that level of reading in 1st was extremely rare in my area.

If the OP's child is one of the few or only kids reading the type of books he is, though, it is rare for their area and he probably needs more than his grade peers. DWK may be a challenging series, but I don't know on that one as well.

The closest thing to a widely-known scientific measure of grade-level in terms of rating reading material is probably the Flesch–Kincaid readability test. However, it has been noted that whether the student is interested in the material has a huge impact on whether they can read it.

Another approach to determining whether reading material is appropriate for the child is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). A ZPD rule of thumb is that a child will learn the most from reading material where they recognize about 90% of the words. Gifted children rarely encounter such texts in school, but usually manage to learn to read by reading what they enjoy.

In summary, don't look for reading levels to be mathematically precise. It's not a particularly helpful quest.