Reading Assessment

Knowing what your child is comfortable reading is important for choosing a reading list that suits the child's ability.  For me, it was important that my children feel good about their reading skills and at the same time meet some challenges.

The Lexile Framework  is a great tool for selecting books that are progressive, or within a certain ability range.  Other leveling systems exist out there, like the grade level system found on the backs of some school age books.  For example 4.2 indicates 4th grade 2nd month.  And there's the letter system used by school teachers that begins with AA and goes to Z.  These are great if you are looking at a series of books which are already catalogued.   But what about the great literature out there that hasn't been catalogued?

Lexile Framework has been a great source of reference for us.

For example here are the results for 20,000 leagues under the Sea:

Jules Verne's original:  870L

Retold by Carl Bowen: 440L

Judith Conaway's adaptation:  440L

This is a very helpful chart for determining which book is appropriate for my children to read.

My eldest is reading in a lexile range of 700-900, so the original is fine for him.  But,  if a younger sibling wanted to read the same story, either of the 2 retellings would be more appropriate reading level.

Try a search for yourself and see!

Bob Books - Basic Phonics

My kids felt such pride after being able to read their very first book.

For each of them their first book was Mat, which is book 1 in the Bob Books Set 1.

Bob Books are written by Bobbi Lynn Maslen and illustrated by her husband.  Each page is paced perfectly for the fledgling reader.  There are not too many words on the page and the stories all end with "The End!"

The stories are charming and the kids love them!  Each book adds a few new letter sounds and keeps familiar characters in the story.   The second book in the series is called "Sam."   I highly recommend this set of books for any child who has learned their consonants and short vowels.  Check them out!  If you want to peek inside the books, amazon has some sample pages and also customer images posted  from readers.

   

Dolch Words

Learning to read is one of the greatest adventures!  

My 5 year-old is in the process of emerging as a beginning reader.   What fun watching him discover how letters combine together to create words. 

To help him on his way, we have been using a combination of explicit phonics and sight words.  We are intensive on the phonics and use the sight words as helpers to make reading real books easier.  

To assist with quick recognition of high frequency words we have been playing a game called Roll-Say-Keep found at TheSchoolBell.com.  

Now that he knows how to read all of the words in Dolch List 1, he is able to read much more difficult books than basic phonics primers.  We often read as a team, with him reading all the short words and me reading the irregular or longer ones!