Keeping appropriate level reading material on hand

[hs03842]

What do you do to keep instructional level reading materials around?  How important is that on a scale of 1-10 for a second grader?  

Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[forty-two]

YMMV, but with my kids the window for graded readers was really short.  We do strict phonics, while most of the leveled readers, even the allegedly "phonics-based" ones, use so. many. sight. words.  So for most of my kids' learning-to-read period, they can't read common sight words and so even the easiest readers are an exercise in frustration (*especially* the earliest readers, which are often the *most* sight-word-heavy <sigh>).  And once their reading takes off and they can read uncontrolled text, they move pretty quickly into, you know, actual books - books that exist to tell a story, not merely to be used for reading practice.  The sweet spot for my bunch, wrt leveled readers being useful, is when they are just about to make the leap to uncontrolled text: they can read most common words (even the ones with tricky phonics) and their phonics is good enough that they can use it to figure out most words in their spoken vocabulary - but slowly.  This is where leveled texts are doable yet not pointlessly easy.  Between the library and the shelf of readers the grandparents have bought over the years, we have plenty of material.  And since leveled readers are mostly utter twaddle at best, whose only redeeming feature is that they allow excited burgeoning readers to read "real books", I'd rather save my money (and shelf space) to go toward quality books, ones that are worth rereading.

I did invest in a few used reader sets that matched my phonics program, but despite liking them I haven't used them much, tbh.  The (substantial) practice material in our main phonics book has been more than sufficient for practicing their phonics during our reading time.  And the vast majority of our content is done through read-alouds (of which I have many, many shelves' worth ;).)

ETA: Also audiobooks are big here.  The first "real" books my younger two read have been books they mostly memorized through audiobooks.

Edited August 6, 2020 by forty-two

[Little Green Leaves]

1 hour ago, JoyKM said:

One of the more intimidating things to me about the age my children are at is knowing if I have the right level of reading material around as they progress.  We joined our new town library a few weeks ago, and I have been maxing out our holds limits since then to fill up our shelves with new stuff for all three kids.  Still...this is year three for me having a child working on reading, and I still get a bit flustered in this area.  I have bought some reading material to make sure I have something on hand but would rather not spend a ton of money on books since we use the library.  What do you do to keep instructional level reading materials around?  How important is that on a scale of 1-10 for a second grader?  

Both my kids have gone through phases of LOVING to read cookbooks. This was after they both knew how to read but before they were quite ready for longer reads. (I mean, they will both still sit and read cookbooks; so will I.) I think cookbooks are appealing because, well, they're about food, and because the items are short and to the point! They also really like reading through kids' poetry collections, I think for similar reasons

[Lori D.]

Very average and slightly delayed readers here (DS#1 = 6yo and DS#2 = 7/8 yo), just so you also have an idea of age for *interest* level of types of books. 😉 

Once DSs were sounding out and the reading actually "clicked" they each really enjoyed a full year of the "stepped" readers from the library for gaining fluency and confidence. These were books for solo reading -- things like Frog and Toad, Fox and Friends, Commander Toad, Nate the Great, etc. -- and all those great nonfiction books at the early levels of "stepped" readers. After a year of so at that level as their solo reading (so somewhere in grade 2 and into grade 3), they were ready to step up to early simple chapter books that came in series -- like Magic Tree House and Jigsaw Jones. Because these were short and repetitive and meant for "practice" and enjoyment, we didn't buy tons of these -- we would hit the library once every 1-2 weeks and bring home a dozen or so of these types of books.

For their "school reading", we did it all as together aloud "buddy style" reading of chapter books at or just above their reading level. These were usually longer and we'd do just a few pages or a short chapter at a sitting, which meant these books took longer to go through, so I purchased a good number of these types of books. Usually I bought used from our local used bookstore, or from other homeschoolers. In grades 1-3, because I was often buying quite a few books that came out of a vendor's booklist (like Sonlight, for example), it was usually pretty easy to resell a stack of those books all together as a "box lot". 

I saved books that were especially charming and beloved or that were re-read several times by DSs. But again, a large amount of our gr. K-3 books were from the library, so we were rotating at a pretty good clip through them, and only occasionally was a book so loved that I would end up purchasing it.

Other things (besides the various they loved reading in the grade K-2nd level as they were learning to sound out / turning the corner & reading / getting fluent:
-  Riddles series of books by Hall & Eisenberg
- Usborne books -- lots of illustrations with short captions and "snippets" of info, so not overloaded on the reading
- Ranger Rick magazine, and other kids magazines
- Search & Find type of books
- books with "exploded view" illustrations
- more advanced/older topic picture books
- Calvin & Hobbes comic collections (a lot of asking of "what's this word", but they loved those comics SOOO much!)

Edited August 6, 2020 by Lori D.

[hs03842]

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Edited December 9, 2020 by JoyKM

[Rachel]

15 minutes ago, JoyKM said:

Thanks!  I just needed to hear that I don't need to be detail oriented to that degree to have them learn to read well.  😓  I think for now just having a ton of library books around will work! 

Yes!

I know when kids are first starting to read it can be so hard to find material that’s easy enough and interesting. But, the stage is short (although it’s feeling like forever with child 3). If you can have trouble getting books from your library see if they will do inter-library loans.

[Btervet]

We don't really use leveled readers. I don't know if its because they use sight words, or are often character theme based (Star Wars, etc.) but they often include very difficult words that don't seem to line up with their reading levels.

For the learning to read phase, we do use a lot of library books, but also keep a few collections of high quality easy reading books. We start with BOB books, but quickly move to Little Bear, Frog and Toad, then Magic Tree House (which can last forever! That's a solid year+ of reading material for learning fluency). I'm sure we have a few other I'm forgetting. A key for my house is that I will *not* read these books to the kids, nor any level readers from the library. If they want them read, they have to do it themselves.