What does the Text leveling mean?

[mom2]

Okay, so my daughter in 3rd grade got a P text leveling for reading, what does this really mean?  I have searched the internet and came up with nothing really.  If anyone is able to explain this to mean please do so.  Thank you.  Is this good or bad news?  LOL!

[Melissa B]

It's an A-Z book leveling system. Levels N, O, and P are usually considered third grade. So, she is reading a higher level third grade reader (or textbook.) Levels Q, R, and S are 4th grade, etc.

[Caroline]

Here is a website about it...

 

http://www.readinga-z.com/books/leveled-books/

[mom2]

You guys are the best!  Thank you

 

[Jennifer N.]

If you go to the link listed above and look on the left side of the webpage, you will see a text correlation chart link (you can also google that term and you will come up with lots of different options).  The levels using letters is a system created by Fountas and Pinnell to level books (both reading educators).  Publishers use all kinds of ways to level books:  grade level, Fountas and Pinnell, DRA, Lexile and so on.  A text correlation chart is helpful when you are not familiar with one system but want to correlate it to another system that you are familiar with or your child's school uses.

 

Where I taught we used Reading Recovery levels and Fountas and Pinnell.  Where my children go to school, DRA levels are used.  I had to use a text correlation chart to figure out the levels myself since I never used DRA materials.

 

Don't get confused when you look at that chart at readinga-z.com.  Apparently they use letters to level their books too, like Fountas and Pinnell but their letters are not the same level.  A Reading A-Z level P is late 2nd grade level whereas a Fountas and Pinnell level P is late 3rd grade.

 

I'd link to my favorite text correlation chart but it's no longer on the internet where I used to find it!  That one was published by Harcourt Brace and Rigby.  Now I will have to find my paper copy in my files.

[Arcadia]

I use the linked chart for reference. My kids former public school used the Fountas and Pinnell scale.

http://teacher.scholastic.com/products/guidedreading/leveling_chart.htm

[ElizabethB]

The levels are based on the progression of sight words, they earliest few levels have mainly the Dolch words and then they move on through the list of 1,000 sight words.

Here is why If that is all they are reading, their vocabulary will not develop, I would make sure that either through at home reading or audio books that higher level vocabulary is being developed:
 

Only about 3,000 of the highest frequency words compose about 98 per cent of almost any discourse. Words from the remaining half-million or so words in English normally compose the remaining two percent of any untreated, natural discourse. However, when written material is artificially simplified in the deliberate attempt to remove that two percent of low-frequency words, the harm that is being done to vocabulary development is hidden. It is usually not even suspected. Such vocabulary control is the real reason for the drop in test scores at the high school and college levels.

 

(A quote from Geraldine Rodgers from my Aliteracy page)

http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Reading/aliterate.html

And, I have personal permission from Gerry to post as many quotes and as long of quotes as I want from her both here and on my website!