Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Reading Level Capped

My daughter told me in third grade that they weren't allowed to get books "this thick" (with a hand gesture showing a thickness of about a standard chapter book). I asked the librarian about it in disbelief and she assured me it was true because "otherwise they all want to read vampire books that are completely inappropriate."

We were able to get a special exemption because I promised to monitor the books (although she monitors well herself and doesn't want to read anything she thinks will be too upsetting).

Our challenge this year has been that she kept saying she didn't know where the higher level books were and the school saying that she did. It turns out no one had realized they were completely above her height and eye level even with the tallest ladder. The only solution has been having me go there after school to read off titles to her.

Having worked with this Lexile system in elementary school for both my kids. The gifted one, and my older DD who has a reading LD and was reading below grade level. The Lexile system is ONE way of judging reading level and based most on how hard a book is going to be to decode. In my opinion it stops being useful about the 4/5th grade reading level.

The school my kids attended in young elementary, is a K-8 school. They didn't restrict free reading. I never heard of a problem with a parent sending in a child with a free reading book. But they did restrict what part of the library the kids could select books to borrow. This was partly due to a supervision situation. The library was a mixed library, media center, hallway, and is quite a large open space. (Even through the move to a new school building.) This was often solved by having a volunteer parent around during library time.

Well, I informed DS's teacher that I would be sending in books for him to read at independent reading time and that I do not want him punished for that. I said he shouldn't have to choose between "obeying" or engaging his mind and learning and that he should be able to read challenging books that he enjoys at independent reading time. She responded that we would discuss at our upcoming meeting. As far as I am concerned the discussion is over. I am sending in books with him to read at independent reading time whether they like it or not. I mean, really, this is nuts ...this doen't take any school resources (if anything it contibutes) and it's obviously beneficial to DS academically as well as in other ways. What morons.