I knew it was coming, but I’m still not ready. I have heard rumors and snip-its of conversation about Reading Levels, but I have only just now been asked to consider them for my kid. It is a concept that gives me hives. My knee jerk reaction is to recoil in terror. I would not be who I am if anyone had tried to make me stick to any reading level.
As a kid I was a voracious reader. I always had the maximum number of library books checked out at both my school and public library. I loved books. I was terrible at phonics and spelling, but I was a expert sight reader. I picked up new words in seconds and rarely forgot them. If I had been tested for reading levels and made to stick to them, I think it would have destroyed me.
Now that I have a kid learning to read, I allow her to work on phonics with her grandmother but it still isn’t the only way I think you can learn to read. I work with her on the sight words which are more my style. All this is fine, but then…enter the 50 different reading level types and requirements:
Fountas and Pinnell, Lexile Level, Primer, Pre-primer, Beginning Reader, Lexile Numbers, The Direct Reading Assessment (DRA), and Reading Recovery. These are all different reading levels assigned to books or kids (or both). How can you make sense of it? This article from Brightly is one of the few explainers that actually makes sense–but there is still a caveat. They don’t always line up with each other and the same book can be scored all over the place by these different systems.
There are a ton of tools to help you compare different reading level systems, like this easy chart from Scholastic. Yet, I have seen some books listed at a 2nd grade level in one place and a 6th grade level in another.
The Common Core instructs teachers to use Lexile reading levels when assigning books and restrict kids to this reading level, and I keep hearing about schools that are not only assigning books strictly at a reading level but actively restricting kids from reading or checking out harder books. Some even ask the parents to restrict reading to these levels (here come the hives). It is certainly a terrible idea to tell kids their reading levels.
Why Restrict Kids Reading?
I did a lot of research, yet I could not find a good answer to this question. The answers seem to center around preventing kids from getting frustrated. That’s funny because I believe that most learning and the best progress require some frustration. But why are kids getting frustrated anyway? It turns out it is because they are being asked to read boring books outside their interests in topics they don’t know anything about.
“Many teachers have told me that they’d like to spend more time on social studies and science, because their students clearly enjoy learning actual content. But they’ve been informed that teaching skills is the way to boost reading comprehension.” –
There is a lot of evidence that kids read better when they read things they are interested in learning about or already know a lot about.
There is Lot of Push Back on Reading Levels, Right?
There is, but most of it is tempered with statements that reading levels are important but…
“Without a doubt, reading levels are an important part of a comprehensive reading assessment.” – Elizabeth Mulvahill in We Are Teachers
There is a big push toward mixing things up a bit, while still believing in the inherent goodness of reading levels.
“Since 2010, more than 40 states have adopted English language arts standards that will require teachers to teach students with more challenging texts. ” – Timothy Shanahan
Photo by Jerry Wang
So Are You Just Going To Let Your Kids Read Whatever They Want?
Yes.. and No. I want to give my kids access to magical libraries of everything everywhere we go. I refuse to restrict anything based on reading levels or potential frustration. But, I do believe in some limits on CONTENT. I don’t want my kids to read adult books on horrible things and have nightmares.
That’s the other side of the coin. When I was a kid I had a blank note from my mother that I was picking up books for her with her library card. This was a lie. I just wanted to check out adult books. This was wonderful for me and helped me to grow beyond my small town and terrible education–but, I also had a few nightmares that I wish someone would have protected me from for a while.
Do you restrict your kids reading? Let me know at shelly(at)achildgrows.com?