Sorry to go a little off topic, but I have been following this thread and it made me wonder ... I grew up in Europe, with what seems like a totally different system and aside from about 10 mandatory books we had to read every year and write reports on, we were free to read anything we wanted to. Just had to read a certain number of books / pages if I remember correctly, but nobody every cared about any reading levels and such. There was no numbering system, no testing, you either could read and moved up in classes or couldn't read at the end of 1st grade and stayed in 1st grade for another year.
So, reading this thread, I now wonder what kind of mess am I going to be with my kids once they go to school? Does all this mean they HAVE to read only books at certain level? I mean ... who is actually going to tell them "NO, you can't read this?" DS4 doesn't read yet other than some sight words, though I'm pretty sure he could read if he wanted to. He just has ZERO interest in it. DS2.5 on the other hand is actually starting to follow the lines in the books with his finger and reading all the words he knows or can phonetically decode. He started with simple words 3 months ago and just two days ago I noticed him trying to really read the books. A friend of mine who's a K teacher saw a video of him and told me he's doing what most of her K kids still can't do at the end of K! If he keeps being interested in reading like he is now, does this mean he'll too have to read the books that the other kids in the class will be reading? That's just not making any sense to me?
