Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Reading Level Maxout in Elementary School?

My 10 year old 5th grader has been at a DRA level 80 since forever. His teacher tested him last week with the Scholastic thingy, and his lexile level is 1235. Don't think it'll make a great deal of difference with what goes on at school, but interesting to know

Although he may have hit the ceiling as measured by DRA, his lexile level of 1235 has not hit the lexile ceiling of about 1800, therefore his lexile level may be expected to continue to grow. Here is a Lexile Find-A-Book website in case that may be helpful to you. (link)

I would ask the teacher about the discrepancy, specifically. It may be as far as she can take her within that classroom curriculum (the 70). But with a Lexile score that high, I would be concerned about appropriate content at that age, for sure.

This is why I was glad when DD's first grade teacher this year said that once they got past a certain letter (DD was at Q end of kindy I think), the distinctions didn't matter really; all the kids in the top reading group could read anything at all you put in front of them, but they were going to discuss books together to work on reading between the lines, looking at allusions, characterization, etc etc. I was worried we'd get the old "she's just decoding" line but really they do discussions dd can actually benefit from, as far as I can tell. (Of course it's still kinda boring typical elementary school books, but it's really hard to find good materials for this age and ability. Another year or two and DD will be able to read anything at all and catch the deeper meaning consistently, and then we can advocate for meatier books).