My 13 y/o son is in 7th grade and was identified as gifted in 3rd. We've always had a hard time finding books that are appropriate for both his reading level and his interest level. While he is gifted, his interests are the same as any other 13 year old boy.

His reading teacher told him today that his latest MAP score for reading "dropped" (it went from 250 to 248) because he isn't reading books that are at his reading level, which is 1452. (DS doesn't remember his lexile range, and "official" results aren't out yet).

I went to the Lexile website and he and I together selected his interest areas and entered his lexile score. ALL of the books that came up were beyond college level. This makes sense, because all of the charts I have seen have a maximum lexile score of 1300 with that corresponding to a grade level of 13.5. I realize the lexile scores go as high as 2000+, but 1300 is where the charts stop.

He's just a normal kid and has no desire to read dissertations, biographies or books such as "Elements of Archaelogical Conservation". While he IS interested in archaeology, paleontology and other sciences, he is also much more interested in more common "teenager" interests.

Until we figure this out, I'm thinking of having him read some of the "American Classics". They're all well below his reading level, but they're higher than some of the popular series he likes such as the Percy Jackson series.

Have any of you had any luck matching reading ability to their child's interests? We're really struggling with this one. Any help is greatly appreciated!

Lexile is just one measure, and it's kind of BS that his teacher is making everything related to lexile. Once you get past a certain point, lexile, IMO, becomes less useful, and certainly for his age group. I used lexile for less than 1 year in my 9th grade class, before dropping it because of its limitations.

There's a lot of criticism of the system out there, and of course I can't find anything right now except this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexile#Criticisms

What classics has he read?

Have you been to the Hoagie's site

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/reading_lists.htm

This one is just for teen boys

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/teen_boys.htm

Interesting excerpt relating to MAP that I found:
"Why do RIT scales vary from subject to subject (e.g. the mathematics RIT scale goes higher than other subject areas)? A ceiling effect exists when an assessment does not have sufficient range to accurately measure students at the highest performance levels. It has nothing to do with the actual numbers attached to the scale and everything to do with the position of students on it. For example, in reading, the RIT scale measures with relative accuracy up to about 245. This represents the 93rd percentile at grade 10, and the 95th percentile at grade 8. If a student scores above we know that student performed high but may not be able to accurately assess how high they performed. Relative to other tests, therefore, there is very little true ceiling effect in this assessment. Even most high performing 10th graders receive a technically accurate measure of their skill."

I know that the Lexile is more of a guide than an absolute. I think what his teacher is trying to do is to encourage my son to use it as a general guideline to help him find books in his range. My son has told me several times that books just don't challenge him.

I went to the Barnes and Noble website and used the Lexile Book Wizard... the second book that came up under his range was "Essentials of Health Information Management: Principles and Practices"... (which is ironic since I am an RN considering returning to school to complete my degree with an emphasis on health information management... anyway, I digress)... That is the type of thing that keeps coming up in his range.

I'm not treating the Lexile as the "be all end all" but I do want to help him find books that he is interested in and that will still challenge him. This is just he best way I know how to do it based on the information that is coming home from school. I am completely fine with him reading a wide variety (and I encourage him to), but he really should read some more challenging books now and then. I'm really not a nazi about this with him. I just want to provide a way for him to expand his reading options.

I have been to Hoagie's website many times. I'll check over the list again, but if I remember correctly, there are no guidelines as far as reading ability go. It may have been updated though. I'll check it out! Thank you!

I would ask that teacher exactly which books she is recommending to hit his lexile level and interests. Perhaps then she will see how ridiculous her idea is when she tries to apply it at his level. Her advice works for an average 7th grader but that is clearly not your DS.

I had great success asking the teacher to give me a list of interesting, age appropriate books from the Lexile website :-) My 9 year old DYS has a lexile from MAP of 1350-1475. There is literally nothing that is age appropriate AND interesting. I do not think he should be reading about the history of Jack the Ripper from a college level perspective.

When we have this exact conversation, I just smile and say "Oh fabulous! Can you get me a list of age appropriate mythology or action adventure books in that range?" When the lexile website says "0 found"- conversation over.

That said, try searching for 'non-conforming' books on the lexile site. You may find a few... though not a lot.

Ditto HappilyMom & CAMom - push this back on the teacher.

IMO, after their reading level gets to a certain point, it's a useless number. Just let them read what they want. I honestly don't even know exactly where my son is at now, because the new school doesn't use lexile, and he's still making 100's on all the AR tests, but I honestly can't be bothered... he's at least around 1100-1200 lexile, and he's only in 3rd grade. Screw it, I let him read graphic novels and whatever else he wants, so long as it isn't super gross or scary.

The simplest rule to check whether a book of appropriate difficulty is pointing new words in one page with fingers. If all five fingers are occupied for one page. It should offer sufficient challenges. Beyond that, kid might find it too difficult. Searching interesting topics is much more important than the misleading lexile number.

My DYS son was a college-level reader last year at age 9. I stopped caring about his level right around then.

He's a voracious reader and likes everything from National Geographic to the Strange Story of Origami Yoda. He wants to read what the other kids in his class read (in addition to the many other books he reads). If his teacher told me to find more challenging work for him, I would just ignore it. He's a great reader. He loves reading. He reads anything and everything. And by the time he gets to college, he'll be an even better reader.

I'm with the others-- it's ridiculous, and even a cursory examination of the lexile scoring of any series of well-known works shows this in a hurry.

I refused to submit my DD to "lexile" assessments after the thing stupidly proposed that my then 6yo DD should be reading...


Tess of the D'Ubervilles, Madame Bovary... etc.

(laughably, to be sure)

Yeah. I don't think so.

She reads what she likes, and she has since she learned. The last I tracked her reading was when she was about seven, but she was regularly reading 500-1500 pages a month-- all of it above grade level. She doesn't seem to have any trouble now that she's taking AP Literature as a 13yo, by the way (unlike some of her conventionally-aged but still bright classmates, I might add).

I like the technique of asking the teacher "what should I do with this information? I need help with this."

That's exactly what I did, too-- and the teacher laughed WITH ME over just how stupid this kind of thing is when applied to HG+ children who are avid readers.

I agree with what others are saying -- at some point reading has to stop being about learning to be a better reader, and be just about . . . reading. Reading is a tool. For learning stuff. Once someone is reading at a college level, improving their reading level should just not be part of the agenda at all.

Also, a teacher who thinks going from 250 to 248 is a statistically significant drop doesn't know what she's talking about.

My dd was in about that Lexile range at the same age. A search for "humor" in that range in the online list produced a single scholarly treatise on humor, one that looked incredibly boring. So we've just not bothered with dwelling on her Lexile range. She is now 13yo and still reads a huge amount, most of it "below her Lexile level," but she enjoys it all immensely.

We had the same problem with our daughter. I actually pleaded for her to read lower lexile works. I figured she could then read whatever she needed to read or liked to read. She was reading so many years above her grade level (at least five years). She was done with reading comprehension at that point.

I had to get special permission to have her read what others were reading - mainly for social reasons.

DD9's Lexile in 2nd grade was higher than in 4th grade. Go figure. It's a rough guide at best.

What we do is let her have access to anything she wants to read. Her teacher did this as well in 3rd grade. Instead of her reading stuff at her Lexile level, it usually ends up being grade-level stuff like Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and the "Goddess Girl" series. She is not voracious in that she is very particular about what she reads, especially if it contains content that upsets her.

Then we have her try bigger books that are in the upper end of her range. This is hit or miss but in the past few months, thanks to public domain books on her Kindle, she has read and enjoyed unabridged versions of:

Little Women
Little Men
The Secret Garden
Grimm's Fairy Tales
Treasure Island

I am also encouraging her to use the Kindle's built-in dictionary function whenever she hits a word she doesn't know, but this is proving a challenge to get her to do it consistently.

ITA! Honestly, it surprises me that lexiles would still be used as a tool for selecting books in 7th grade for *any* student (unless they were in a remedial reading program) - but I'm also coming from a background where reading levels weren't really used at all once my kids learned to read, with one exception (my youngest dd is in a different school than my older two, more traditional, and they use AR to select *part* of the books they read independently). My ds was reading and understanding college-level science etc texts bin early elementary. We too had a really tough time choosing fiction books for a short while (and I do wish I'd thought it through enough to realize there would be a chapter on reproduction organs before buying him the college-level anatomy book when he was 7... )... but what we did was just let him choose what he wanted to read - and he didn't choose fiction until around 4th grade when other kids started reading things like Warriors etc - and we let him read the same things other kids his age were reading and he loved them. I don't think it stymied his development of reading skills at all - he could already read very well! What it did do was help him see that reading could be for FUN and enjoyment... and I think that's something that you really have to balance with trying to find appropriately leveled books. I think most of us adults who love to read simply for the sake of reading don't think twice before picking up a book that is technically below the level we're capable of reading - so why should our kids not be able to?

Anyway, fwiw, my ds reads so fast that he runs out of books to read quickly... so I have spent time digging around for fiction books for him to read. He's in 7th grade, and what I've been doing this year is picking books from the AP Lit lists, as well as other interesting books I see listed on Hoagies etc. If it's a book I haven't read, I take a quick look through reviews online to see if it's something I think he'd enjoy or doesn't contain themes I'd rather he not be exposed to yet. He's really enjoyed the classics on these lists - but to be honest, I have no idea what the lexile level is on anything he's reading.

Best wishes,

polarbear

Oh, one more thing. I'm an academic, I read academic writing all the time. And I sometimes encounter writing so complex that it pushes my comprehension abilities. You know what we call that in the biz? BAD WRITING. And I bet it would have a lexile score through the roof.

That's the problem with using lexile scores beyond the early levels -- it turns difficult-to-comprehend writing into a virtue for its own sake. It's a perversion of the whole purpose of skillful written communication.

Meg: You. Are. Awesome.

Yes. Yes! YES!

And yes again!

I scored college level reading comp sometime in the primary grades. It would have been a joke to try to get me to read actual adult literature then. Just good books, classics, silly stuff, amazing themes, etc were what I enjoyed and learned from. I read a LOT but realistic contemporary fiction was always lowest on my list, until actual college. A good reader should have exposure and then read for pleasure. It really will take care of itself.

My dd was reading at a college level (vocab and comprehension) at age 9. Some good advice I received was to have her read books from different eras, such as Dickens, as that will provide a challenge in use of language and vocabulary that is different from contemporary use. Exposure to broad types of writing is always helpful - including how-to books and technical-but-accessible periodicals and journals based on personal interests.