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Syracusa, you might be interested in the following resources for finding books appropriate for your son's reading level.
AR Bookfinder uses a metric called an ATOS level and allows you to search by range and interest. The ATOS levels correlate to grade, so a level of 3.5 indicates a reader in the fifth month of third grade. If it's part of the curriculum, school districts typically begin using the AR (Accelerated Reader) program in the second grade.
The Barnes & Noble Lexile wizard allows you to search for books based on Lexile range and interest. First graders typically have a Lexile range that falls between 200-400, which correlates to Fountas & Pinnell H-L.
Lexile levels can be very useful if your child likes to read juvenile periodicals. Scholastic publications are well-known for making use of Lexile levels, but lots of other publishers do, too. For example, Kids Discover publishes a version of their magazine for emergent readers. Here's a sample: Butterflies. Notice that on the right side of the page, the Lexile level is 360. This would put it within the range of a typical first grader.
Kids Discover is one of my favorite junior periodicals because their magazines are ad-free and their website allows you to search their on-line database for your state standards and match them up with issues to augment your child's learning. So, let's do a search for Georgia's first grade science standards: S1CS2.d. - Make quantitative estimates of familiar lengths, weights, and time intervals, and check them by measuring. Click on the issue link for this standard and up pops a Kids Discover issue called Measuring (http://www.kidsdiscover.com/aspx/pDetail.aspx?ListGUID=98cbd69a-1638-4ddb-8c3e-2b01f40b182d - broken link) filled with articles and activities that will assist your child to understand this concept. Notice that it has a Lexile level of 300, perfect for your first grade reader!
Kids Discover is carried in many school and public libraries if you'd like to give it a try. We receive it as a subscription, along with National Geographic Kids, which I also highly recommend.
Edit: I'm so glad I took the time to research this, because my fourth grader is doing a unit on map-reading this quarter and look what I found at National Geographic Kids. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a series of Geo-literacy activities. I love the internet!
Last edited by formercalifornian; 09-06-2011 at 12:41 PM..
Syracusa, you might be interested in the following resources for finding books appropriate for your son's reading level.
AR Bookfinder uses a metric called an ATOS level and allows you to search by range and interest. The ATOS levels correlate to grade, so a level of 3.5 indicates a reader in the fifth month of third grade. If it's part of the curriculum, school districts typically begin using the AR (Accelerated Reader) program in the second grade.
The Barnes & Noble Lexile wizard allows you to search for books based on Lexile range and interest. First graders typically have a Lexile range that falls between 200-400, which correlates to Fountas & Pinnell H-L.
Lexile levels can be very useful if your child likes to read juvenile periodicals. Scholastic publications are well-known for making use of Lexile levels, but lots of other publishers do, too. For example, Kids Discover publishes a version of their magazine for emergent readers. Here's a sample: Butterflies. Notice that on the right side of the page, the Lexile level is 360. This would put it within the range of a typical first grader.
Kids Discover is one of my favorite junior periodicals because their magazines are ad-free and their website allows you to search their on-line database for your state standards and match them up with issues to augment your child's learning. So, let's do a search for Georgia's first grade science standards: S1CS2.d. - Make quantitative estimates of familiar lengths, weights, and time intervals, and check them by measuring. Click on the issue link for this standard and up pops a Kids Discover issue called Measuring (http://www.kidsdiscover.com/aspx/pDetail.aspx?ListGUID=98cbd69a-1638-4ddb-8c3e-2b01f40b182d - broken link) filled with articles and activities that will assist your child to understand this concept. Notice that it has a Lexile level of 300, perfect for your first grade reader!
Kids Discover is carried in many school and public libraries if you'd like to give it a try. We receive it as a subscription, along with National Geographic Kids, which I also highly recommend.
Edit: I'm so glad I took the time to research this, because my fourth grader is doing a unit on map-reading this quarter and look what I found at National Geographic Kids. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a series of Geo-literacy activities. I love the internet!
Thank you so much, formercalifornian! These resources are great!
Did you not have reading groups when you were in school? I find it hard to get my mind around your silliness on this issue. When I was in school in the 50s and 60s we were divided into reading groups of 4 to 6 children who were on the same level and the teacher taught each group separately. The kids who were not be actively instructed did seatwork while the other reading group was being instructed. I don't remember them having any one *babysit* them. They simply worked on their own.
No. I NEVER did.
You may have a hard time getting your mind around my "silliness" but believe it or not, other countries don't practice this division in groups by ability level.
I grew up in one such country. We NEVER had reading groups. The entire class read together - and the class had 35 children in it. They all came out reading perfectly fluently and quite a few of us became voracious readers and formally educated out the whazoo.
Thank you so much, formercalifornian! These resources are great!
You are so very welcome. If I come across more links, I'll make sure to post them. I should really become a children's librarian, because I LOVE this kind of stuff and could spend all day researching it!
I had horrible trouble reading in kindergarten and first grade. I couldn't grasp the concepts of sentence structure. I was pretty good with the individual words, such as cat, Mary, the, corner, ball, dog, Spot, and so on. We had the Fun with Dick and Jane stuff, but it just really blew my mind how all these kids could read it out loud and I'd be stuck on the same sentence over and over again when it was my turn.
Well it turns out, that I'm a natural speed reader. As long as I don't have to read it out loud, I can get through a page faster than most people, and comprehend what I'm reading better than they do. But if I have to read the same page out loud, I get hopelessly lost. This happens because I can't talk as fast as my mind is reading. My head goes ahead of my mouth and I lose my place after a sentence or two.
When the teachers stopped making me read out loud, I shot ahead of most of the kids in my class and was reading university-level novels and classics by the 5th grade.
If I had been forced to stay "with" the class and read out loud like everyone else, I probably would've ended up flunking out of school and labelled a dummy. Or told that I was dyslexic and put in with the "special kids" classroom. Or held back a grade, or force-fed tutors during summer vacation. Or other equally nightmarish stuff of intelligent kids whose *more* efficient ways of doing things makes them appear somehow inferior.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 09-08-2011 at 08:14 AM..
Reason: Removed off topic remarks and personal attack - Use the DM feature for personal conversation
You may have a hard time getting your mind around my "silliness" but believe it or not, other countries don't practice this division in groups by ability level.
I grew up in one such country. We NEVER had reading groups. The entire class read together - and the class had 35 children in it. They all came out reading perfectly fluently and quite a few of us became voracious readers and formally educated out the whazoo.
No worries. I went to school in this country in the '90s and never had reading groups. We also had more than 30 students in a class, in a low-income school, and we all learned to read quite well.
Well that wasn't really a joke posting. That is what is used in social media.
It's called "leet speak" and has morphed and been adapted by the cell phone crowd where numbers are easier to type.
It's origins date back to the 80's.
Is this an ad for Hooked on Phonics? It has kind of a weird sound to it, and isn't quite believable.
And yes, you do need to know how to decode letters in order to read that paragraph. In fact, you have to be pretty good at it.
No it is NOT an ad for anything. I'm the OP. I was voicing an opinion about a troublesome factual post by a teaching supervisor... who still adamantly insists that 'creative reading' is better for students.
Which quite possibly explains why the particular school where she teaches and supervises is ranked dead-last (and has been for over 10 years) in the state where she resides.
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