Carmel Creek

 

Dear Families, 

This year will be full of great adventures as we learn to read, explore and seek information from books. Books and stories bring our classrooms and learning together.

To support the classroom reading growth of your child it is important to engage in both independent reading at their level and reading with you at a higher level to discuss comprehension, what we are thinking as we read, and how we sound aloud – fluency. 

Research shows the importance of students reading independently at their appropriate reading levels, where they are able to decode, apply word attack skills, and comprehend on their own. At Carmel Creek, a variety of measures such as the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) help us identify appropriate levels of text for your child to read to support their independent reading growth. I will inform you of your child’s progress and independent, “just right” reading level to help you choose text at this level when reading at home. 

Both Guided Reading Level (GRL) and Lexile Levels will be used to identify independent reading levels. 

As most books do not list the GRL or Lexile level on them, you may need to search for some titles and then find them at the library or just check the levels on books you may already have.  

Finding books at GRL levels….

*When reading with your child, choosing one level above their GRL level will provide an appropriate instructional level to point out new words, decoding, or comprehension strategies. 

One resource is connected to atozteacherstuff.com:

http://books.atozteacherstuff.com/leveled-books/     Click on Leveled Books GR

In addition, visit the Scholastic.com website  - select “Teachers,” on the top and in the pull down menu select “Teacher Book Wizard.”

On the right hand side of the page, set “GR” or “Guided Reading Level” as your leveling system. Then, you can select books at the level of your choice. Or, just enter the name of a book and find the level. 

http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/homePage.do

Finding books by Lexile Level…

Lexiles are a range of numbers and generally, books at the lower end of that range are for more independent reading, and books at the higher end of that range are at a more difficult, instructional level. www.lexile.com is easy to use and will provide a fantastic list of books to read – just select “search for books.”  You can even enter your topic of interest and it will give a list of books you can find at the library. (Books on this site are not screened for age appropriateness, just level).

Remember, this is just one aspect of their reading time. Continuing to read a variety of texts with your child, that interest them, is important to continue the love of reading!