What Level is this Book?

There are so many ways to level books - Guided Reading Level, Lexile, Grade Level Equivalent, DRA etc.  Leveling books seems to be the trend.  I'm not sure if this was popular in the past and if this is just the pendulum swinging back again.  When I started teaching 5 years ago, I wouldn't have been able to tell you what a reading level was or what it meant.

Now, knowing my students' reading levels is integral to my everyday teaching life!  There are times when I feel that we can become too dependent on a child's reading level, especially when it comes to parents using this as the one and only measurement of their child's reading abilities.

I primarily base my small guided reading groups around levels.  My ultimate desire is to be able to group students by the reading strategies they haven't yet mastered. Meshing level and strategy groups together in a way that makes sense and fits into a reasonable time frame is still a work in progress for me.  Additionally, while reading programs' leveled books are convenient, they may not always be representative of authentic reading.

Here are some websites I use to level picture and trade books that aren't already leveled that I think my students should experience:

http://bookwizard.scholastic.com
http://home.comcast.net/~ngiansante
http://books.atozteacherstuff.com/leveled-books
https://leveledbooks.beavton.k12.or.us/search.php

Give them a CHOICE!

So far this school year I have spent a lot of time trying to pick out just the right book for each of my reading groups.  Sometimes my long searches have resulted in less than what I'd hoped for.  I have two little boys who both moved here from different countries just this school year.  They are incredibly eager to learn and enjoy learning new words and having conversations about the new things they are learning here.  Today I decided that I would show them 3 different books at their reading level and let them decide together which book we would read.  They both agreed very quickly that they wanted to read the book about animals.

Before I read a new book with any of my students, my first objective is activate my students' prior knowledge and help them connect to the story.  While doing this, we also take a picture/word walk through the book to preview it and help our thoughts.  Depending on the students and book, you may have to ask questions to get them to share or think.  Other groups may go on forever and ever!  That was the case today with these boys.  I didn't intend for our 20 minute group to be a discussion all about animals without actually reading the book, but before I knew it the boys were hooked on the pictures of bats in the story.

I just happened to have another book (at a much higher level) at the table for another group that has incredible pictures of animals.  The book is called Animals Nobody Loves.  The boys looked through that book completely on their own.  I simply sat and listened to their conversation.  They discovered hyenas and how they are the same animals in The Lion King, and they learned the word poison because some snakes are poisonous.  They talked about how big an octopus brain might be and wondered if a bigger brain means you're smarter.  They repeated words for each other when one of them was saying a word incorrectly.  They told stories of a time when they smelled a skunk.

I was totally amazed at the large amount of rich language these two boys were using with each other.  It was like I wasn't there.  They were helping each other, asking and answering questions, and laughing through it all.  This greatly veered from my original plan, but what they experienced with each other was much more meaningful.  I was reminded that students should be the ones doing most of the talking and discussing in a classroom and that giving your students choices is a very powerful thing!

Follow one 7th and 8th grade English teacher's journey to motivate her students to read:
A New Assignment: Pick Books You Like