How to Find a Book's Guided Level
Guided reading is an instructional strategy teachers use with elementary students. Books are assigned a guided reading level, from A to Z, based on readability. Each student's reading level is assessed. By carefully matching students with books which are at the appropriate level, readers are able to enjoy a variety of texts with good comprehension, while increasing their reading strategies. Students problem solve, using sound-symbol relationships and context cues, to increase comprehension.
Instructions
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Guided Reading Levels
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Begin by sorting books according to basic leveling criteria. According to Reading a-z.com, low level books often include repetition, which makes the book predictable. Simple story lines do not require interpretation of metaphors or unfamiliar subjects. Illustrations provide comprehension support for beginning readers. Higher level books use more complex words and sentence structure, and a wide range of vocabulary. Smaller print size and a higher word count per page increase the difficulty.
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Refer to a published list of leveled books. T.G. Gunning's book, "Best Books for Beginning Readers," provides a list of over 1,000 children's books, with reading levels and book reviews. "Guided Reading," written by Drs. Irene Fountas and Gay Sue Pinnell, provides detailed information about leveling criteria and an index of popular books with their levels.
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Use an Internet based search program to determine book levels. A to Z Teacher Stuff and Scholastic Book Wizard are frequently used search sites. Most leveled book databases allow searches by book title, author or publisher. Scholastic Book Wizard also has a Book Alike feature, which allows a teacher to enter a book title and find a list of other books at the same level.
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Check publisher's websites. Many publishers, including National Geographic, McGraw-Hill, Heinemann Raintree, Creative Teaching Press, Scholastic and Steck/Vaughn list the guided reading levels of each of their books. Publishers also sell pre-leveled book sets. Scholastic Classroom Books, Creative Teaching Press, Wright Group and Rigby offer sets of fiction and non-fiction leveled books.
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A list of 32,000 leveled children's books is available from the founders of Guided Reading, Fountas and Pinnell. The website, foundtasandpinnellleveledbooks, is fee based. Once a subscription is purchased, the user may search the book list by genre, reading level or publisher.
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References
Resources
- Photo Credit Th girl with books image by Maria Grin from Fotolia.com
