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How do you know what reading level your child is at?


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How do you know what reading level your child is at and what does it mean to you? If I hear another mom say her 2nd grader is reading at a 5th grade level, am I to assume he/she is gifted, or just likes to read. I don't know. I hear moms say this all the time and I don't get it's significance.

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It probably just means they've done some type of state testing, such as a DORA reading test. Some states require them (such as mine for older grades). I use the test(s) to give me a gauge if I'm doing at least a baseline job teaching math and reading. So far so good! :)

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Some folks use a grade level as a guide when researching lists of books. Some do it for a reflective connection. Some testing companies do it for benchmarking. Some folks use it as a diagnostic tool.

 

Comprehension trumps all of that though. Interpretation ability even more so.

 

In our house it makes very little waves anymore. The emphasis is on the latter two areas now.

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Some folks use a grade level as a guide when researching lists of books. Some do it for a reflective connection. Some testing companies do it for benchmarking. Some folks use it as a diagnostic tool.

 

Comprehension trumps all of that though. Interpretation ability even more so.

 

In our house it makes very little waves anymore. The emphasis is on the latter two areas now.

 

I totally agree about the importance of comprehension. That matters so much.

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Some folks use a grade level as a guide when researching lists of books. Some do it for a reflective connection. Some testing companies do it for benchmarking. Some folks use it as a diagnostic tool.

 

Comprehension trumps all of that though. Interpretation ability even more so.

 

In our house it makes very little waves anymore. The emphasis is on the latter two areas now.

 

I am somewhat confused by this response because in my limited experience of administering "reading level" assessments, all the assessments we use include comprehension and higher level analysis questions as a component of determining reading level. (I am currently in a masters program in deaf ed and reading/language is a huge part of the program content.) Maybe there are other assessments out there that only assess fluency, but that is a small part of "reading level" and I am not aware of any assessments based only on word decoding ability. Maybe I misunderstood your response?

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When a parent says that their child is reading at X grade reading level, I just take it to mean that the child is reading books that an X grader typically reads. They may have had testing done or not.

 

I find it awkward, but people seem to always ask me what grade reading level my kids are at. I don't know, but could probably guess. Instead, I just list a couple books they've read lately and let the person form their own conclusions.

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A lot of parents misunderstand the results of some of the reading tests schools are giving. When I was teaching fifth grade, we had to give a state reading comprehension test. We would get the results back and it would say your child's reading level is (for example) 10.2.

 

They would suddenly think their fifth grader was reading at a 10th grade level. The truth is, the results meant that their fifth grader scored what a 10th grader in his/her 2nd month of school would score if they took the fifth grade level reading test. It didn't mean the fifth grader would fly through a 10th grade level reading test...big difference there.

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Dd here is a very fluent reader, so much so that she gets a little cocky about it. So what I did was to assign her challenge reading for discussion and content. We have a special stack of books for discussion now.

 

Can the child discuss various thoughts, feelings, insights- can they create questions about the material they've read, can they sort out authorship content for trustworthy research? More or so like book discussion for retention and connections, putting new and old knowledge together.

 

Can they find literary devices, structures, choose passages that are significant?

 

Can they discover within the words the roots, suffix treatments, do they know the etymology behind the words, their history? Why is that word there, what does it mean, it's connotations?

 

With each passing "grade level" there is a spider web of skills around handling literature styles, types and forms. Those are the things we concentrate on now.

 

And that's without going deeper into the actual structure and parts/layout of a book, which is..a world unto itself.

 

I'm not saying that grade level awareness in reading is completely worthless, but that it is just one step in a very long journey. One that hopefully lasts a lifetime.

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Unless I was looking for recommendations from a librarian or answering a family member's direct question, you wouldn't hear me say what reading level my daughter is at in real life. I've probably mentioned it here before for context. I don't bring it up, but acquaintances asking my daughter about her favorite book can get interesting.

 

I estimate her reading level based on the books that she picks up and reads on her own. She understands the stories and likes to talk about what the characters do and why. She likes to talk about how certain stories are the same or different.

 

We haven't done any kind of formal testing. I also don't expect her to complete high school level analysis even if she is otherwise reading and comprehending material at a high school level. However, she is capable of actually reading and actually understanding the types of passages and the type of literature at what I consider the top of her current reading ability. I don't think it's the most worthwhile reading she can be doing at her age and maturity level, but she can do it and does do it occasionally by choice.

 

I really dislike the sentiment that a parent must be inflating their child's reading level. Some parents do misunderstand test results, but I would generally trust a parent's evaluation before I would assume it is only based on decoding or misreading scoring criteria.

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The kids who are in PS around here use the STaR test for Accelerated Reader. It's a cloze test, where the child just has to pick the correct word to fit into a sentence, and my DD maxed it when she was in PS K, so I don't give a lot of credence to it. There's a big difference between being able to read a sentence and being able to read a long, thick book. I think the STAR test was created for Lake Woebegon-I don't yet know a child who isn't above grade level.

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How do you know what reading level your child is at and what does it mean to you? If I hear another mom say her 2nd grader is reading at a 5th grade level, am I to assume he/she is gifted, or just likes to read. I don't know. I hear moms say this all the time and I don't get it's significance.

 

If I wanted to know my child's reading level, I'd probably look up the books he/she reads from the library on a site like The Book Wizard from Scholastic.

 

If another parent asks me the reading level of one of my children, I would probably give an example of a book they've read recently. I think that tells the person more than saying "5th grade reading level" or some such.

 

A 2nd grader reading at a 5th grade level is not necessarily gifted, but is, IMO, a good reader.

 

Reading level is significant if you are trying to get some books from the library to supplement your child's learning. You'd want to choose appropriate books. It also would be needed to choose an appropriate curriculum level for LA. I could see another parent asking me what reading level my child is if she had a child the same age that she was concerned about. KWIM?

 

With my youngest who has struggled with reading, it is significant for me to be able to say that he is reading solid 2nd grade material and 3rd grade with a bit of help, because less than a year ago he was tested by the PS to be 1st grade reading level. He has come up 1 grade level + in his ability. With my two older children, I don't think about it as much.

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