Reading Levels of Books

[Diana B]

Can someone help me understand all the different types of levels for reading levels? I looked up on the scholastic website a book my son just read and it said 2.8, does that mean 8th month of 2nd grade?

 

Other than the scholastic site, are there other places I can find the reading levels for books?

 

I'd like to try to find some of the reader books that are at about the same reading level. It seems they are either WAY too easy or too advanced. This one book we found was a tad easy, but really was just about perfect for helping with his fluency. (Not to mention he thought it was funny!)

 

Anyone have suggestions for finding books?

[Murmer]

A lot of leveling in schools is done by a guided reading letter...therefore many lists of books are also leveled that way. If you check scholastic and click on the more info one of the pieces of info about the book is a guided reading letter. Use that letter to google titles guided reading level and the letter. I just random googled M and found 5 or 6 booklists that had ideas for books to try. The higher the level the easier it is to find the books at your local library.

[AngieW in Texas]

The problem with easy readers is that publishers think that big print and short sentences mean that the book is easy to read. You really can't pay much attention to reading levels below about 2.5 (which is 2nd grade, 5th month).

 

The level rating site that I think is best is http://www.lexile.com .

[MaMa2005]

Here are some of my links to reading levels:

http://www.johnpaul2.org/JP%20main/ParentCommunication/Downloads/Reading/RC_5pt.pdf

http://www.pacinfo.com/~handley/orsig/index.html

http://www.classical-homeschooling.org/celoop/1000-primary.html (This is large list. To find the RL of most books, just type the book name and reading level into Google i.e. Alice in Wonderland Reading Level - you should get some hits for the RL of just about any book.)

http://bookadventure.com/

[Sun]

What you've found is one of the big limitations of book levels. Books are usually assigned levels based on an excerpt from the book. Depending on which sentence or sentences are used to get the level, that level can vary a lot! Also, different companies use different criteria for their levels. Some look just at number of words per sentence; some weight heavily toward average word length; some use a mixture of methods.

 

The end result is that you can't trust that a 2.8 (or any level) book will really be the same level as another 2.8 book. There could be a big difference.

 

At your child's level, I found it best to just do a lot of looking through books myself, using the levels as a guide of where to start looking.

 

This is one of my favorite resources for book levels:

oasl.info/lexiles/ReadingLevelComps.pdf

 

It compares all sorts of different programs' levels - Guided Reading, Lexile, etc. and provides grade-level equivalents.

 

I also like the AR Book Find site:

http://www.arbookfind.com/default.aspx

 

It lets you search for books and get a rough grade level for the text.

[Time for Chocolate]

A very basic way to check reading level that we used to use in school is if the child reads a page and doesn't know five or more of the words, it is too hard for him/her.

[hsmom3tn]

I use the Renaissance Learning website. You can search for a book by title, author, or ISBN (which is best when you're looking up a book that has several different editions published). You will be able to see the reading level and the interest level (I believe they're rated as lower grades, middle grades, and upper grades for the interest level). This is good because, for example, sometimes a book with a third grade reading level may not be appropriate for third graders.

 

Go to this site: http://www.renlearn.com/

 

Click on the "accelerated reader" tab; then scroll down and click "order quizzes" on the left side. Of course, you're not really going to be ordering anything; but that gets you in. :001_smile: