What reading level after AAR2?

[ExcitedMama]

Unfortunately we don't have a single bookstore here and the librarians aren't very helpful so I'm not having much luck finding appropriate extra reading for DS. What is the grade level after AAR2? Hopefully that will help me find the right type of books for him.

[forty-two]

From what I'm seeing, AAR's scope and sequence doesn't correspond to a "typical" grade-level sequence.  Looking at the AAR Level 3 pre-test, successfully completing level 2 means that students know the first 44 phonograms and how to read:

*words with blends at the beginning and end

*V-C-E words

*Bossy-R words

*basic contractions

*words with -ed ending

*two syllable words

 

Looking at the levelled readers we have, I'd think he could read most Level 2 and maybe some Level 3 readers.  Level 2 uses mostly common words and expects more decoding than use of picture clues (most level 1 readers have phonetically harder words and less common words than level 2 readers :confused1: , because they expect beginning readers to use picture clues :glare: and have parental help).  You might need to be around to help sound out common words that are phonetically difficult (because all the common levelled readers series I've seen completely ignore decodability :cursing: and instead seem very sight word and picture clue based). 

 

Honestly, most of the levelled reading series I've seen seem very ill-thought-out and more of a money-making thing than actually of help in reading, because none of the levels are of any phonetic-reading use until you can read anything in your oral vocabulary, whereupon you can read *any* of the levels (minus print size and number of words on a page - they do increase in complexity there - but you still need to be able to read everything in your oral vocabulary to truly read even level 1 readers).