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I am wondering if there is an online reading assessment that will help you identify at what "grade-level" your child reads?

What is entailed in this?

When someone says my child reads at a fifth grade level....does that mean :

1)they read/pronounce correctly all words that a fifth grader would,
2)reads AND understands all words or can make good contextual guesses at what they mean,
3)reads AND understands words AND understands all the subtle nuances of story..grasps the meaning and motivations of characters and can figure out the moral of stories, or guess at plots..etc.


I am just trying to understand what is meant by grade level reading and hoping to better place my son and help him grow.

Thanks

I'm not sure about the specific details to your questions, but I do recall DS's grade 2 teacher saying that in order to qualify for a specific reading level, they had to score at a minimum percentage, and it was quite high (95%? I can't remember, but it was at least mid-90's). If I recall correctly the scoring was based on decoding, reading comprehension, and vocab.

I can tell you how the Scholastic levels are determined... it's quite interesting (we learned about this in my EA program). It's done by number of words per sentence and number of syllables per word. In otherwords, "She sat and ate a banana" would be considered a higher grade level than "I feigned dismay" ...weird, huh? I guess they have to have some kind of guideline to follow though.

My advice (I've finally, finally figured this out) is not to worry too much about grade level and instead foster a love of reading by choosing what your son is interested in, regardless of level. If you have a book that is at the right level for your son to improve his reading skills but he's not interested in it, he may become resistant. If, on the other hand, you give him a book that's about something he enjoys regardless of level, he'll grow to love reading. Then if you keep piles and piles of books in your house (lol my husband feels overrun by books) then he'll have lots of opportunity and choice.

I never understood the "reading level" thing here. Growing up (in Czech Republic) ... every year we had a list of books we HAD to read (10-15 books) ... those books were the "treasures" of our literature, starting with simpler ones for the little kids and more demanding for older kids and had to write reports on those books and then we were supposed to read a certain number of books we'd choose and write reports on those. But nobody really cared about what "level" they were. It was books we were interested in. I spent probably good 5 or 6 years reading nothing but books about aliens or native Americans (Karl May and his books about Winnetou ... for those who are familiar with them :)). It was all about finding something you truly wanted to read so you would stick with reading rather than being told what and when to read. This also meant that nobody really needed LA acceleration because they could keep themselves at the level appropriate for them.

btw ... didn't mean it in a bad way! ... unfortunately, in the US, for the most part you do need to know what level your child is because that's how things are around here ... My first paragraph is just a little vent ... because it's something that just bugs me!

CNN- I completely agree that piles of books and a love of reading is key, and we fully immerse ourselves in that philosophy! Mainly it is brute curiosity. I have decided to hold off on IQ testing for at least four or five years, but when I mentally try to figure where he fits on the curve..I keep coming across terms like- reads "x" years above grade level etc... And I'd just like to know what exactly that means.

Maybe I could just get an idea from some of you. My son is 5 yrs 2 months, and reads a Flat Stanley book independently in about 30-45 minutes. This is the most advanced chapter book he will read completely independent. I quiz him on what happened to make sure he really read. He will read like every other page of Dahl books or Narnia..but gets tired much easier with finer print and prob the more complex ideas. Will read anything science...but while these are bigger words and more complex ideas they are not nearly as long passages. From that could someone give me an approx grade level?
I did notice that when we finished reading the Narnia series together, he didn't really understand the characters...their motives...I'd hardly expect him to...he just turned five and has no idea why someone would be evil, nor any real connection with actual evil people (thank goodness). For him it was good enough to follow what happened-not why.

I just read on here of other kids reading advanced books, and I wonder if the full understanding is there or not.

I think the only way to fully know would be to test him on comprehension and word meaning, and have him read out loud and track the decoding errors. It's still hard though because how do you standardize your test? I don't think there's an exact answer. The school will do their thing, and unless you get testing materials from the teacher (reading samples, questions, etc.) it can be hard to duplicate.

If it were me, I'd google to see what grade level the book is at, and then use that as an approximation.

I know what you mean though... you hear lots of "my child reads at this level" ...but what does that mean?

Phey - this is what Scholastic says about Flat Stanley:


http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/book/flat-stanley

CCN- thanks. That's a good starting point. But as you said scholastic does seem to have a weird way of calculating that.

Does anyone know though if it goes simply off ability to pronounce/read, or if it goes off of ability to comprehend story lines/plots/character?

Note that "a" Flat Stanley (one of the books in the series) is different from "the" Flat Stanley (the original, unabridged book on which the series is based).

Accelerated Reader (arbookfind.com) says the books in the series are 2.2, 2.3, 2.4, or 3.3. The original is 4.0 unabridged and 3.2 abridged. Roald Dahl's books are mostly 4th grade level; the Narnia books are mostly 5th grade level.

Book leveling is an art (judgement is required), but the way books are actually leveled is a science (formulas are mechanically applied). I don't think you're going to find a satisfactory answer to your questions because of that mismatch.

Accelerated Reader quizzes mostly test recall. There's none of them that care about pronunciation - that's tested separately as a reading fluency test (our district uses DIBELS). STAR Reading (http://www.renlearn.com/sr/skills.aspx), which is what our school uses to assess reading level, does test comprehension. The reading level you get is basically "your score is at the 50th percentile for kids of that grade-and-month who were in the norming sample."

There is enormous spread in reading ability among younger kids. My DD's first grade teacher said that she had kids who tested anywhere from kindergarten to 6th grade level at the end of first.

I have used the DORA online reading test with my children, published by letsgolearn. It had flaws, like all such systems. But does a pattern of strengths and weaknesses that matches my dd.

phey, I think that most systems which categorize actual literature selection into AR levels, lexile scores, etc. are somewhat arbitrary, for the reasons that MK and CCN have illustrated.

It doesn't hurt to estimate reading level on the basis of some combination of those, I think-- but really, the only thing that matters much is where the child is at and what s/he is ready for and interested in. BECAUSE those systems are so arbitrary, I mean, they aren't really very useful.

Of course, if it's bragging rights that are on the line, then by all means... but just be aware that MOST of those are about pretty bare bones literacy, and not "understanding" beyond basic comprehension. This would be the "what" not "why" of your earlier remark re: the Narnia books.

I can't speak for others, but I have never "counted" books that my DD could technically read-- but not "understand." There hasn't been much of that, though... because she isn't that interested in what she can't understand, and she doesn't like be read to since she learned to read for herself. So when I say that she was obsessed by Tolkien, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, the Series of Unfortunate Events, Dahl, and Harry Potter at 4-8 yo, yes, I mean fully independent reading.

I have found it more helpful to keep in mind a handful of recent "favorites" read rather than trying to determine "reading level" on the basis of evaluating the CHILD. I just take a sampling of what she's been into and see where that falls in terms of lexiles. At some point it becomes problematic because interest level guides reading selections far more dramatically than reading LEVEL does. This became true for my DD when she was about 7yo. The thing that gives this away is that the child may well veer toward books with earlier publication dates (in which literacy levels are far higher for far younger audiences-- re: Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins,etc.) because they are not outstripping maturity with content that isn't appropriate.


It remains true; she's been tackling adult fiction since she was about 8-9yo, but I vet most of it for content appropriateness. Yeah, okay... so the Mary McGarry Morris binge last summer was an aberration there. Whoopsie.

There are a few sites with quizzes that will allow parents to register as homeschoolers-- you might try that with the BookIt program (which is organized by AR level, I think).

Scholastic's Reading Counts program was once free, but isn't now.

http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/


They do have other good resources though, and links out to both AR and Lexile which explain the philosophy behind each one (which might answer some of your questions about the data/organization).