Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy giftedness and agreeable kids

Yes, kids read at a lower level at school because they're not just decoding and being carried along by the excitement of the story. In reading groups they're being asked hard questions, analysing the text, remembering small details, reading between the lines, inferring things about the character's motivations, etc. You'd find that easier to do on a John Grisham book than on Chaucer because the low level book (most mass market fiction is about 6th grade level) needs no concentration to decode. Because these kids are just learning how to use their higher order thinking skills on text it helps to have a comparatively easy book to practice on.

Yogawordmom... we had a similar issue with school. My DS is in K and they had him assessed at reading on a 2nd grade level. This was the highest group. They insisted he was reading at second grade even though at home he's devouring books at a much higher reading level. We had him tested and he's reading at an almost 6th grade level, and comprehension was just as high.

The reading level question is an interesting one. I am really not sure of DD's reading level, or even that such a thing can be definitively known--but her fluency is 190 WCPM and that is about 50th percentile for 8th graders. (Grade level expectation was 53.) Her guided reading level, according to them, is Q--4th grade. All of that seems to suggest she may benefit from differentiated reading instruction, though I am not sure how uncommon she is for her particular class/school.

Fluency is a proxy for reading comprehension, and a surprisingly good one, considering that they are not really the same skill, but still only a proxy. What it actually measures is decoding fluency. Where decoding skills pretty much level off late in middle school, an 8th grade level wpm just says she's achieved mastery in decoding. (This assumes she was reading 8th grade difficulty level text, BTW.) There are much better standardized measures of reading comprehension, if one wants to put the time and expense into it (the TORC-4 comes to mind), though none as efficient for school/class-wide screening as a one-minute reading fluency probe.

The key word in that last sentence is "comparatively." Where this process falls down for gifted early readers is that the reading level becomes "shockingly" or "insultingly" easy given their ability levels. If the reading is far below their level, you lose their interest, and they miss out on those tiny details that they're asked to regurgitate in order to demonstrate what they term, at that level, "comprehension."

Also, the questions in early elementary are often stupid, obvious questions. For example, a sample text might read:

"The old man decided to go outside. He put on his pants. He put on his shoes. He put on his hat."

And a "comprehension question" might read: "Why did the old man put on his hat?"

The expected answer is, "because he decided to go outside." But it's a stupid question, because this is not the '40s, and people don't always wear a hat outdoors anymore. So a gifted reader naturally concludes that the text did not give a proper reason why he wore a hat, and tries to guess, based on the little context given. Hmmm... we know he's old. "Because he's bald?"

The answer is marked wrong, and the teacher then reports the child is the one with comprehension problem, rather than the other way around.

Or they totally shut down any attempts to teach from too-easy material.

Even now, my DS2.7 is brilliantly noncompliant (and quite understandably so!) if someone patronizes him with text like, "A fat fox sat next to a dog on the red mat." It might be roughly the appropriate decoding level for him, but he despises the lack of meaningful content and will openly mock whoever is "testing" him (ahem...MIL!) or just stare blankly into space. The person might then revert to testing him on phonics and letter names, thinking he didn't know how to read, which would send him running around the room making up jibberish sounds in contempt. Add to that the fact that he often mouths or whispers his reading and it creates a situation where not identifying his ability is highly likely. I imagine older kids might also go underground when unchallenged, or portray a much lower mastery than their actual ability if they are even somewhat perfectionistic.

To a person testing DS who doesn't know him, he'd look like a kid who hasn't even grasped the alphabet, but if they just gave him something at a similar level to the text above, but with more meaning like, "Mad banners, bad manners", he'd read it and then dissect the joke.

DS6's kindergarten teacher says he is the only kid who she has ever caught trying to sandbag her before-school-starts proficiency testing. He claimed not to know the names of half the letters in the alphabet, then started reading to her fluently.

Dude has nicely encapsulated precisely why I am beyond proud of my DD's work ethic in earning A's through high school curriculum, which was most definitely in this kind of category.



The problems created by a too-sophisticated grasp of beyond-context, implied, or connotative meaning are really refractory to solutions other than substantive differentiation. The larger problem is often convincing average-intelligence educators that this is a REAL phenomenon at all. They seem to really believe that the "smartest" kids will not "misread" questions this way.

And my son would look at that question. Conclude that the text didn't give a proper answer and write nothing and get a zero. The teacher would then wonder if the child is being defiant, refusing to do homework, or when this happens for an entire assignment and so he doesn't turn it in, he is not organized and needs "study skills".

Are you saying it is very likely that if she has mastered decoding she also has high comprehension, or not really? She can easily read/pronounce words, nearly all of them, really. But that doesn't mean she knows what they mean.