Finding Books at the Right Level for Kids is Harder Than It Should Be
The more we talk to parents of kids we tutor, the more we realize that most of them are lost as to what books they should be buying or checking out from the library to practice reading with their kid. As we discussed before, kids love reading real books. The problem has multiple parts.
I’m going to start with the most controversial take. Basically, all “levels” that folks have come up with do not map to what kids are actually learning in each grade in school. Whether it’s GRL, Lexile, or AR, they all have very little correlation to the typical progression of phonics learning.
What kids need are books they can read. The more words they have no way of decoding, the more frustrated they feel and the more likely they are to give up on reading. Ideally, we have a new system that maps the words in a book to the words kids should be learning to decode. For instance, the GRL guideline for the second quarter of first grade is F books. Depending on the curriculum, you will have learned your short vowels and your blends or your short vowels and your long vowels, but you haven’t learned both blends and long vowels. But if you read an F level book like Axel the Truck: Field Trip, it has all of these sounds. “Axel speeds down the road”.
More importantly, parents aren’t sure what “level” their kid is at. If their school is not assessing them and providing either a Lexile range or sending them home with GRL readers, most parents can’t tell you what level their kid is reading at.
Second, the most prominent levels on most books are so broad and obscure that they don’t make sense. The major collections are Step Into Reading, I Can Read, and World of Reading.
The typical have levels from 1-4 that somewhat corresponds to grades. However, they in no way correspond to the phonics and decoding the kids should have learned or are currently at.
One parent had bought a bunch of Level 1 Star Wars books for their first grader who was reading at Level E and only knew his short vowels and some of his blends. He was quickly discouraged by these books.
Once we directed the mother to Level E & F Pete the Cat books from I Can Read, he was much more engaged.
It is true that we want to stretch our kids, but presenting them with words they have no way of knowing how to decode leads to guessing and back to the disproven methods. But I’ll leave the perils of guessing to another post.
