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More on Text Levels: Confronting the Issues | Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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More on Text Levels: Confronting the Issues | Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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More on Text Levels: Confronting the Issues

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by Irene Fountas, Author and Director of the Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative at Lesley University In response to the many comments the blog has received this week on the Text Levels- Tool or Trouble blog post: You have shared many important thoughts on the topic of text levels.

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Text Levels– Tool or Trouble? | Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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Text Levels– Tool or Trouble? | Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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Lesley University Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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by Irene Fountas, Author and Director of the Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

When my colleague Gay Su Pinnell and I created a gradient of text for teachers to use in selecting books for small group reading, we were excited about its potential for helping teachers make good text decisions to support the progress of readers.

Our alphabetic gradient is widely used by teachers for this purpose and has become an essential tool for effective teaching in guided reading lessons.

With every good intention, the levels may have been applied by professionals in ways we would not have intended. We did not intend for levels to become a label for children that would take us back to the days of the bluebirds and the blackbirds or the jets and the piper cubs. Our intention was to put the tool in the hands of educators who understood their characteristics and used it to select appropriate books for differentiated instruction.

We are well aware of the importance of communicating student progress accurately to families. Rather than the use of levels in reporting to families, we have encouraged the use of terms like "reading at grade level expectation" or "reading above grade level expectation" or "not yet reading at grade level expectation" on report cards along with other clear indicators of a student's processing abilities such as understanding, word-solving abilities, accuracy or fluency. In addition we have encouraged the use of indicators related to amount and breadth of independent reading.

Students actually experience a variety of books at varied levels in a rich literacy program. They may experience complex texts as read aloud or shared reading selections and a range of levels in book discussion groups or independent reading. Highly effective teaching provides a range of opportunities with different texts for different purposes.

In our best efforts to use assessment indicators, we want to be sure that our purposes best serve the children we teach and give families the important information they need. This may not mean using labels such as book levels that hold more complexities and are intended for the use of the educators as they make day-to-day teaching decisions.

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Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative

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by Irene Fountas, Author and Director of the Center for Reading Recovery and Literacy Collaborative When my colleague Gay Su Pinnell and I created a gradient of text for teachers to use in selecting books for small group reading, we were excited about its potential for helping teachers make good text decisions to support the...

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The Leveled Library; When Is It Time to Remove the Scaffold? – Pernille Ripp

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The Leveled Library; When Is It Time to Remove the Scaffold? – Pernille Ripp

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being a student, being a teacher, Literacy, Reading, Reading Identity, student choice, Student dreams, student driven

When I was a 5th grade teacher, I was told to level my library, or at least a part of it. When I asked why, I was told that it needed to be done so that students could find the right fit books. Yet, in our classroom, this was already happening. I was a 5th grade teacher after all and most students had many different ways of determining whether a book would be the right fit for them or not. This was something we had developed throughout the year. Just like when they went to our school library, the students knew to pick up books, flip through the pages and determine whether they wanted to read a book by reading a few pages and so on.

When I present, I often discuss levels and our seemingly obsession with the boxes they create for us. We love when we can quickly point a child in the right direction. We love when we can hand a kid a stack of books without having read them and say; these are for you because their level told me so. Whether Lexile, Fountas & Pinnell, AR score, or another contrived measuring form; levels seems to have permeated our educational experience. And it makes sense, after all, with our obsession with data and standardized testing, we love when we can break something complicated down to something tangible. But reading identity was never meant to be broken down like this.

Levels are not meant to be a child's label, but a teacher's tool to quote Fountas & Pinnell. They were never meant to be hindrances to children exploring books, nor were they meant to be the focal point of how we know a reader. They were meant for guiding us, the teachers, as we planned our instruction in order to help students succeed at the reading strategies we were teaching. And yet, I have seen entire classroom libraries designated by letters, even whole school ones. I have heard from librarians that were told that they had to police their book check outs to make sure a child had picked the correct books. From teachers who have seen children stop reading because they were only allowed to pick from certain boxes. Levels have even shown up in our book order magazines in order to help parents guide their child's decision.

I cannot be the only one that is horrified at what this is doing to our readers?

You see, levels, much like a child's reading level, is meant to be a scaffold. We start our early readers by guiding them using every tool that we have, including the reading level they are at, as we try to help them figure out how to pick books by themselves. Having a level or a letter helps them on their beginning journeys as readers. So does the five-finger rule. Yet at some point, our conversation needs to move beyond the letter, or whatever other designator we have. We need to shift the exploration of reader identity past the easy and into the hard. We need to start asking students what draws them to books and what keeps them there. How do they know when a book will be successful for them? How do they book shop? How do they keep track of what they want to read next? It has to be more than just because the level said it would work for them. Those conversations take time, they take energy, and they take us knowing our students in a deeper way than just their supposed reading ability. It also takes investment from our readers, which again, takes time within our curriculum. If our goal is to create reading experiences where students will leave our classrooms and school knowing who they are as a reader, then our conversation has to extend beyond the level.

So before we level our entire library, or even tell a child what level they are at, remember that depending on our students, it may be not only unnecessary, but also damaging to their future reading life. As educators our main goal is to create independent learners, yet the very levels we use to help students reach independence means that they are not. Moving beyond a level, a label, or whatever else we have decided will break down a child for us must be a priority as teachers of reading. We must ensure that their reading identity does not hinge on an outside indicator, but instead on their own understanding of themselves as readers. That takes time, and while time seems to be something we have very little of in school, it is an investment into their future life as adult readers.

Levels were never meant to confine a child's reading choices or life, they were meant to help them on their way. Much like we remove training wheels from a bike when a child is old enough, we must remove the levels as well. We owe it to the future adults we teach.
PS: I love this post from Kylene Beers "A Kid is Not an "H"" If you are wondering why there seems to be a common thread to so many of my posts as of late, it is because I am working on two separate literacy books. While the task is daunting and intimidating, it is incredible to once again get to share the phenomenal words of my students as they push me to be a better teacher. The first book tentatively titled The Global Literacy Classroom is scheduled for release November, 2016 by Solution Tree. The second, which I am still writing, is tentatively Passionate Readers and will be published in the summer of 2017 by Routledge. So until then if you like what you read here, consider reading my book Passionate Learners - How to Engage and Empower Your Students. Also, if you are wondering where I will be in the coming year or would like to have me speak, please see this page.

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The Leveled Library; When Is It Time to Remove the Scaffold?

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When I was a 5th grade teacher, I was told to level my library, or at least a part of it. When I asked why, I was told that it needed to be done so that students could find the right fit books. Y...

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I was in a cab in Baltimore talking with the driver. He eventually asked me what I did and I told him I spend most of my time working with teachers of middle and high school students who read below grade level. He asked if I'd give him some advice. He said he has 12 grandchildren, and number 9, "our third grader who is the nicest kid you will ever meet," is having trouble with reading. "He's a H. Do you know what that is? His teacher keeps telling his mom that he's a H. We don't know what that is."

While I didn't give him a crash course in the leveling systems for books that schools use, I did explain that a book might be labeled an H, but his grandchild is not an H. He's not a J or M or a P and he, his wife, the child's parents and most importantly that little eight-year-old boy should stop thinking of himself as an "H." We talked about things they could do at home to grow his confidence as a reader and improve his enjoyment of reading while improving his fluency and comprehension. I have a feeling this grandpa is doing all of them, right now. And as good as I feel about this family's concern about this child, I feel as bad that somewhere between the teacher learning about leveling books and talking with children and then the parents of those children, the book lost the label and the child gained it. Let's please be careful and not confuse the designation we might give to a book with a label we place on a child. A child is not an H.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized by Kylene Beers. Bookmark the permalink.

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I was in a cab in Baltimore talking with the driver. He eventually asked me what I did and I told him I spend most of my time working with teachers of middle and high school students who read below...

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Guess My Lexile - The Book Whisperer - Education Week Teacher

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Guess My Lexile - The Book Whisperer - Education Week Teacher

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What do Jeff Kinney's popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451 have in common? What about Gossip Girl: A Novel, Cicely von Ziegesar's catty romance and The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson's 1979 Newbery Honor book? While clear distinctions exist between each book's literary merit, age appropriateness, and reader appeal, these titles possess one similarity--they sit within the same Lexile text complexity band.**

Well-meaning educators, concerned about increasing text complexity and reading rigor, engage in this game of "Guess My Lexile" when denouncing the low-reading level of young adult literature, elevating certain titles over others, or dictating book purchases and recommended reading lists. But looking at just a few examples reveals problems when narrowly evaluating texts by readability number alone.

The Lexile Framework for Reading by Metametrix provides quantitative assessment of both students' reading levels and texts' complexity. Students receive a Lexile measure from certain reading tests. Books and other texts receive a Lexile measure from a software tool, the Lexile Analyzer, which evaluates word frequency and sentence length. Many schools use Lexile measures to assess students' reading levels and match students with appropriately rigorous reading material.

I have no issue with assessing students' reading levels and identifying text complexity. As a teacher, I find such information helpful when determining my students' reading ability and what books might fit them. What concerns me is that in many situations, Lexile measures become the sole factor in book selection and recommendation.

While identifying readability can be useful when evaluating textbooks, guided reading texts, or other teaching materials, selecting books for classroom instruction and recommending books for independent reading are two different processes. Avid readers do not always read at the edge of their competence, traveling through increasingly more difficult texts as leveling systems proscribe (Carter, 2000). Given free choice, readers select reading material according to their interests, preferences, background knowledge, purposes for reading, and personal motivation.

I hear horror stories about teachers and librarians rigidly enforcing Lexile bands--preventing children from reading books that aren't at their Lexile level: Students can't read an entire series because every book isn't at their Lexile. Students can't use sections of school and classroom libraries because the books are too easy or too hard (according to Lexile measures). Parents receive Lexile reading lists for their children with strict instructions to exclusively use these lists when purchasing books.

In cynical moments, I picture a Lexile store selling tattoo kits, so over-zealous educators can brand students with their Lexiles. Wouldn't this make trips to the library easier for everyone?

Investigating Lexile measures further, imagine my surprise when I found this information on Metametrix's website:

"Many other factors affect the relationship between a reader and a book, including its content, the age and interests of the reader, and the design of the actual book. The Lexile text measure is a good starting point in the book-selection process, with these other factors then being considered."

Addressing questions such as, "What do Lexile measures tell me about grade appropriateness?" "Why do some great books have low Lexile measures?" and "What is the relationship between grade equivalents and Lexile measures?" I found several informative videos and researched-based responses on Metametrix's website, which reinforce that Lexile measures do not tell us everything we need to know about texts or students. With Lexile measures touted as a key indicator of text complexity as defined by Common Core State Standards, we must critically consider what Lexile bands offer teachers and students, and what they don't.

Overreliance on reading level systems hinders children from learning how to self-select books. Bookstores, libraries, and Grandma's bookshelf aren't leveled. Beyond students' and books' reading levels, we must consider content and interests when selecting materials and recommending books for independent reading. Slavish devotion to numbers doesn't benefit readers.

Is this practice employed because it's better for kids or just easier for adults? What about children who find their reading experiences limited when Lexile numbers dictate their book access and choices? Looking at a child's face or a book's cover, I see possibility, not a number.We can't shortcut or disregard knowing books, knowing readers, and building connections between them.

Reading leveling systems like Lexile, DRA, and Guided Reading provide teachers and librarians with one measure for making book recommendations and supporting students as they self-select books, but children shouldn't wear their reading levels like a badge and become defined by them.

Do we teach children how to preview and evaluate books for themselves or teach them that reading and book selection belong to school and we can't trust them with it?

For additional commentary about Lexile, reading level systems, and text complexity:

" The Lexile Framework: Unnecessary and Potentially Harmful" by Dr. Stephen Krashen

From ASCD's Educational Leadership, " The Challenge of Challenging Texts" by Timothy Shanahan, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey

" Lamentations from the Lex-aisle" by Paul W. Hankins

From School Library Journal, " Formula for Failure: Reading Levels and Readability Formulas Do Not Create Lifelong Readers" by Betty Carter

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What do Jeff Kinney's popular Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451 have in common? What about Gossip Girl: A Novel, Cicely von Ziegesar's catty romance and The Great Gilly Hopkins, Katherine Paterson's 1979 Newbery Honor book?

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Myths that might challenge us about what we think we know readers need.

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Myths that might challenge us about what we think we know readers need.

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Psychologists love to measure things, and perhaps nothing has been measured as much by psychologists as reading-both texts and readers. Multiple different instruments measuring text readability have been devised and used over the past century, as have multiple standardized tests of readers' abilities. Though their results are often first presented as numerical scores whose interpretation is difficult without a key, most instruments also translate these into more generally understood grade-level reading scores. These are typically reported as year-and-month scores; thus a book scoring at reading level 8.1 is said to be written at the early eighth-grade level, while a student scoring at reading level 4.6 is judged to be reading at the level of the average student in the sixth month of fourth grade. Two common reading level systems are exceptions to this: Fountas and Pinnell's Guided Reading program uses letters, from A to Z, while the increasingly popular Lexile leveling scheme rates both texts and readers from 0L to approximately 2000L (there is actually no upper limit). Both of these do, however, offer rough grade level conversion charts on their websites, here and here respectively.

However measured, reading levels can be a generally useful guide to whether a particular text is going to be far too difficult for a particular reader. For example, the student who scored at 4.6 on a recent, valid reading test will probably have significant difficulty reading and understanding that text at an 8.1 reading level.

Unfortunately, though, the ubiquity and precision with which these reading levels are now being tested and reported has led to their increasingly inappropriate use, especially in schools. For example, professional development materials accompanying the Common Core initiative instruct teachers to "match" texts to readers based on Lexile level, staying within a narrow range of only 50L above to 100L below each student's tested Lexile level. Most school reading incentive programs require students to read texts within a restricted range of their measured reading skill levels, either within the Lexile range just mentioned, or, if using another rating system, within five months of their measured reading levels. For example, that student who tested at 4.6 might only receive credit for reading books leveled from 4.1 to 5.1. Many schools now even restrict the books students can check out from the school library to those at such "appropriate" levels, and in some cases, parents are even being told to " concentrate on material within his or her Lexile range " when offering books to their children at home.

Such misguided policies and practices are based on three very prevalent myths about reading levels:
Myth #1: Each text has a discrete, accurately measurable reading level.
Because reading levels are often reported very precisely, one might think that measuring the readability of a text was an exact, agreed upon science. Nothing could be further from the truth. Almost all text level measures are based upon some combination of word difficulty (measured by number of letters, number of syllables, and/or frequency of use) and sentence complexity (measured by length in words and/or number of phrases). However, the specific formulas and differing emphases of various measures can result in very different reading levels for a single text.

Take, for example, the 2016 Newbery Medal book, The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. The Lexile corporation rates this award-winning book for young teens at 640L, equivalent to somewhere between a 3rd and 5th grade reading level, according to their conversion tables. ATOS, the reading level system used by the Accelerated Reader program, rates it at reading level 4.8 (i.e., 4th grade, 8th month). Using the first 200 words from Chapter 2 of the book, the Free Readability Calculator results in the following range of levels, from seven more of the best known and respected readability scales, for exactly the same words from the same book:

Automated Readability Index: RL 5.6

The SMOG Index: RL 5.8

Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: RL 5.8

Linsear Write Formula: RL 6.6

Dale-Chall Formula: RL 6.9

Gunning Fog Index: RL 7.6

The Coleman-Liau Index: RL 8.0

That readability scores for this book, based on well-accepted, research-based formulas, span more than three grade levels is not an unusual result; try it for yourself using 150 words or more from any text. And of course, none of these scales can measure how well the text is actually written-whether the author uses transitions effectively, provides rich descriptions, or explains things clearly, all of which certainly affect the readability of a text.
Myth #2: Each reader has a discrete, accurately measurable level of reading skill.
Tests of reading skill levels, even those that are carefully designed and commonly used, suffer from many of the same difficulties as measures of text readability, in that each uses differing contents and criteria for measuring reading ability.

Some use lists of common words at differing grade levels to judge decoding ability, while others require readers to pronounce a list of nonsense words as well. Some include measures of oral reading fluency and/or vocabulary, while others do not. Some tests ask readers to answer questions after reading a passage, while others measure comprehension through a CLOZE procedure in which readers are asked to supply missing words in a passage, and still others require readers to recall salient details of a text as a means of judging comprehension. Some tests are given by a trained psychologist, one-on-one, while others are given to groups of students in regular class settings. Some are timed, while others are not.

Even the very criterion for scoring "at" a certain reading level differs among tests, with some tests allowing readers to attempt all the test questions (or as many as they have time for), and then scoring based on the number of correct answers, while others subtract a certain percentage of incorrect answers from the number of correct answers before scoring, and still others arrive at a reading level by stopping the test after the reader has missed a certain set number of questions.

Not surprisingly, readers will often score quite differently on different reading tests.

In addition, while texts stay the same from day to day, readers do not. People's performance on many tasks, including reading tests, can be significantly affected by whether they are tired or well-rested, hungry or full, healthy or sick, distracted or focused, anxious or confident. Children are perhaps even more affected by such outer circumstances, since they lack the maturation and self-regulation skills that allow many adults to maintain more even performance levels in varying circumstances.

Myth #3: Readers should (almost always) read texts very near their reading level.

Given the margins of error implied by the variability in both text readability and reading skill measurement described above, the expectation that texts can be closely "matched" to readers' skill levels is clearly unfounded. The idea that texts should always be matched to readers' tested levels is equally problematic, for a number of reasons.

First, reading is an interactive process, so the difficulty or ease with which a particular reader can read a particular text depends in part on his or her prior knowledge related to the text and motivation for reading it.

Reading research has repeatedly demonstrated the effects of prior knowledge on reading comprehension; simply put, it is easier to read and understand texts that talk about things you already know a lot about. When readers have a good bit of prior knowledge on a topic, even difficult texts can be easier to read and understand because they can draw on their own knowledge to fill in any gaps in their comprehension. Conversely, many of us have experienced the effects of a lack of prior knowledge when first reading in an unfamiliar subject area, whether it is economics or art or environmental science. It is not so much that we cannot read or do not know the words in the texts, as it is that we don't have the background knowledge to make sense of what they say. Similarly, readers demonstrate higher "reading levels" in genres that are familiar to them. For example, a complex science fiction novel, very difficult to read for someone who rarely reads in that genre, may be considerably less difficult for a frequent science fiction reader, who is familiar with common science fiction conventions and story lines, and perhaps even with previous books by the same author.

Interest and motivation also great affect a reader's ability to read a text. An excellent example of this is the recent Harry Potter phenomenon, in which thousands of children as young as second grade read and enjoyed 300 and 400 page books written at fifth to seventh-grade reading levels, simply because they were fascinated by the magical world created by J.K. Rowling in her series. Most teachers can likewise recount stories of students like the struggling high school reader who tests at a fourth or fifth-grade reading level, but somehow manages to read and understand a motorcycle repair manual written at the tenth-grade level, because he wants to fix up his motorcycle. And of course, resources can be made available to help truly motivated readers read difficult texts, from dictionaries, online resources, and audio texts to the time-honored strategy of simply asking someone else, a teacher, parent, sibling, or friend, about the words you don't know. We might also point out here that most very early simple books (those with highly repetitive text) simply cannot give children a full sense of the joy of reading.

Also, there is good evidence for the benefits of reading texts both above and below one's official reading level. Reading easier texts can help novice readers, especially, gain fluency and confidence, and can develop readers' enjoyment of reading at all levels. Consider how many of us enjoy relaxing with a good romance or murder mystery that is well below our adult "reading level"! On the other hand, researchers are finding that challenging students to tackle more complex texts, while supporting them in their efforts to do so, leads to greater growth in reading than simply having them read texts at or just above their current reading levels.

Finally, full comprehension is not necessary for a reader to enjoy and benefit from a book. Certainly students should not be assigned and required to learn from a book that is significantly too difficult for them to read, but most of us, again, remember reading and enjoying in childhood books like The Secret Garden or A Christmas Carol or Captains Courageous without, at first, fully understanding the historical contexts or social issues involved. Indeed, it is often as we grow, and read and then reread such books, that we first gain a sense of history or start to value equality or self-reliance or charity, from stories and characters we have grown to love.
Some take-aways:
Reading levels should never be used to limit the texts children may access or try to read. Neither reading tests nor readability measures are anywhere near exact enough to predict which individual child will best be able to read or benefit from which individual book or magazine or online text. There is nothing wrong with letting a child try to read a text, and then abandon it if it is too hard, or too simplistic, or simply boring-after all, adults do this all the time. Limiting reading selections based on reading levels too often results in children having too few texts available to them that they want to read, and thus discourages them from reading altogether.

Passion, curiosity, and knowledge are at least as important as reading levels in helping children find good things to read. This is especially true because we know that motivation and knowledge can increase effective reading levels, while, conversely, readers can enjoy and gain a lot from texts that interest them, even if they are "too easy."

Children should not be required/expected to independently read and learn from texts that are considerably above their reading levels. Ironically, textbooks are perhaps the most common source of such demands, since they are frequently written well above the reading levels of the grades for which they are intended. But disparity between student reading levels and text readability levels does not necessarily mean we should discourage or prevent such students from engaging with such texts. Rather, it should trigger educators to provide support for reading as necessary, including vocabulary- and knowledge-building tools, partner reading, group discussions, audio- and video-texts, and simple availability for questions. Indeed, since reading levels are not exact measures, and also affected by prior knowledge and interest, such supports will probably be helpful to many other students as well.

To read more about this topic, check out these clear, but nuanced discussions of readability and leveled reading by top researchers in this field:

Hiebert, E. H. (2012). Readability and the Common Core's staircase of text complexity. Retrieved from http://ransonbalancedliteracy.cmswiki.wikispaces.net/file/view/Text-Matters_Readability-and-Complexity.pdf

Shanahan, T. (2011). Rejecting instructional level theory. Retrieved from http://www.shanahanonliteracy.com/2011/08/rejecting-instructional-level-...

Benjamin, R. G. (2012). Reconstructing readability: Recent developments and recommendations in the analysis of text difficulty. Educational Psychology Review, 24(1), 63-88.

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Psychologists love to measure things, and perhaps nothing has been measured as much by psychologists as reading-both texts and readers. Multiple different instruments measuring text readability have been devised and used over the past century, as have multiple standardized tests of readers' abilities.

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Could we be harming readers by using a tool the way it was never intended to be used?

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Could we be harming readers by using a tool the way it was never intended to be used?

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Nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece that questioned what seemed like the sudden surge in teachers scrambling to level their classroom libraries. For the past few months, I have been attempting to revise that piece with my current thinking. Well, my current thinking doesn't seem to stay current for very long! My thinking around levels really isn't changing, but it is definitely evolving.

After reading Pernille Ripp's recent post, rereading Donalyn Miller's wonderful piece in EdWeek asking us to Guess My Lexile, and thinking of Kylene Beers' retelling of a gut wrenching conversation in A Kid is Not an H, I have to just come out and say it... l evels can really harm kids.

That is, levels can really harm kids when used inappropriately. Irene Fountas, who created the alphabetic leveling system along with Gay Su Pinnell, has even come out and said that their leveling system is frequently being used in ways that they never intended. Some of these uses include leveling entire classroom independent reading libraries, labeling children, and as a reporting system to parents (read more about all this here and here).

However, it is extremely important to also acknowledge that understanding the levels of books (notice I did not say levels of children) can also help kids. Becoming familiar with the levels of books can help teachers when creating and making decisions about guided reading groups, picking out text sets around a common topic for children in class to access, and especially when deciding which reading behaviors, skills, and strategies to teach and support around certain books. A key thing to remember here is that a level of a book doesn't just refer to how easy or hard a book is to read, rather it refers to an increasingly complex set of skills, strategies, and behaviors that a reader may need in order to read and understand a particular book. This idea is especially important to understand for those of us who teach elementary school.

During my two years as a literacy coach, I discussed the topic of book levels with dozens of K-5 teachers more times than I can accurately recall. Rather than writing a summary of two years worth of conversations, I'll share my ideas about the three questions that came up most frequently. Should I tell my students their reading level?

So many people have a different take on this. For example, if we ask Foutas & Pinnell and Lucy Calkins this question, we just may receive two very different answers. With these two potentially different answers coming from two of our biggest elementary literacy instruction powerhouses, who do we follow? Well, my answer is always the same. We follow our kids.

I now pose this question: Will telling your particular students their reading levels benefit them or hurt them? I honestly can't definitively say. One thing I know for sure is that the reading levels of students in a classroom should never ever be made public. I once saw a public chart of reading levels posted in a classroom (I must mention, this was when I was visiting a school outside of my own school district), and I have to say that I was furious. What made me especially angry was that there were two children who were outliers on this publicly displayed chart. Most of this class hovered between a level M and P on the chart. Two of the kiddos names were prominently displayed on their own next to a level E and a level G. Just imagine being those two kids in that class. Simply put, a public display of levels has no place in a classroom, school, or anywhere where a love of reading is being fostered.

As I head back into the classroom next school year, I do not plan on telling my students their exact reading levels. I do not see a real need to do this. Instead, I do plan on holding daily reading conferences where I focus on skills, strategies, and goal setting with my students. Honestly, I do not see a need to tell them their levels. Knowing the levels of particular books will be a tool I heavily rely on as an elementary teacher to make instructional decisions. It will not be something students use during the school day. On the flip side, I do know many great teachers who do make the decision to tell students their levels. My way is not necessarily the right way for all classrooms. However, it is the right way for my classroom and my students.

I just urge you to handle this decision with care. If you do make the choice to let your students know which book level is considered independent for each of them, please be vigilant about holding frequent conferences and continually assessing so they can see themselves progressing on an ongoing basis. Please, do not allow a level to define a child's identity as a reader. Children grow in reading ability through learning how to access and apply different behaviors, skills, and strategies when reading different texts. One thing we should continually do as educators of young children is notice, name, and record these indicators to track, report, and respond to progress and needs. It's most important to point out these indicators to our kids themselves. When we point out and name a reading behavior or skill to a child, they are more likely to replicate it. It may sound something like this, " How do I track and report reading progress if I decide not to focus on the level? Sarah, in our discussion, I noticed that you mentioned how your character changed and why you think she changed due to her reaction to the events in the story. Now, I'd like to suggest a next step for you. Start thinking about your character's internal thoughts. Try to see if you can notice any growth in your character's thoughts as you continue to read... "

This is also something we should be doing with parents. Rather than telling a parent, "Sarah is reading at a level R," we should be holding conversations that might sound like this: " Sarah is a really engaged reader of fiction! Right now, she is particularly interested in mysteries. One thing Sarah is doing well is noticing how a character grows and changes over the course of a story. This is important because... " Now, isn't that more informative than stating that Sarah is reading at a level R?

Should I level my classroom library?

Well, this just seems to be the million dollar question in elementary education at the moment. Again, if we look to Fountas & Pinnell and Lucy Calkins, we will receive two different answers.

When I head back at the end of this summer to put together my classroom library, I am not going to arrange my library by level. It will be arranged by genre, author, interest, topic, series, you name it! It will be a place that kids go to choose a book they love, not to choose a book based on a level. To kick off our reading workshop, we'll first have a mini one week unit on the process of selecting and sharing books. Levels won't even be mentioned. Yet, difficulty/ease will be discussed- along with enjoyment factor, interest, series, topic, and any other reason a reader may choose a book or not choose a book.

If you make the choice to not level your classroom library and notice a student is reading outside of their independent reading level, I highly recommend addressing the issue on a student by student basis. Most of the time, there is no need to address this issue at all. If a student is engaged and can make meaning from the text, then let them read it! Who really cares, if in this case, that the student is reading above or below their level? If the student is not engaged, confer as appropriate. If the student is not making meaning from the text, confer as appropriate. Perhaps the answer is to gently guide the student to choose a different book. Or, the answer may be to help the student become engaged or find meaning within the text. There is no right answer here. Rather, the right answer is to look at the child in front of you, listen, and respond appropriately.

If you do choose to level your classroom library, please be sure to consider the social-emotional implications. Also, I implore you to ensure that students select books based on interest and desire to read, not just on their independent reading level. I don't care how many class meetings one has about learning differences, accepting others no matter what, and setting goals- if a student is reading far below where the others in class are reading, that student knows it. I beg of you- make sure that student feels safe and comfortable as a reader in your classroom. I cannot stress this enough. Do everything in your power to ensure that the students in your classroom feel safe and comfortable as readers. Friends, a good rule to follow is to always follow your students' lead. We should always consider the experts, look at the research, and understand the process of how a child learns how to read and then grows as a reader. Yet, more so, we should look at the children in front of us and ask if the decisions we are making are having a positive impact on them both academically and emotionally. The answer should always be yes to both.

This is not an easy subject. It is certainly not a yes or no question nor a black or white answer. The answer always lies within our individual students.

My first book for teachers, To Know and Nurture a Reader: Conferring with Confidence and Joy, cowritten with Kari Yates, is now out and available from Stenhouse Publishers. Our goal with this book was to help teachers make the important practice of conferring with readers manageable, effective, and fun!

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Archive from The Teacher Triathlete, June 21, 2016 Nearly two years ago, I wrote a piece that questioned what seemed like the sudden surge in teachers scrambling to level their classroom libraries. For the past few months, I have been attempting to revise that piece with my current thinking.

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Leveled libraries were once standard practice (and in some districts required), but in recent years there has been considerable pushback about their place in the classroom. Many teachers and literacy professionals now feel that leveled libraries do more harm than good. Even famed literacy gurus Fountas & Pinnell, who practically invented book leveling, have said, "It is our belief that levels have no place in classroom libraries, in school libraries, in public libraries, or on report cards."

Here are five reasons it's time to do things differently:

1. Leveling books is time-consuming.

Leveling your library takes a long time, and not every book is available through the various leveling tools (DRA, Lexile, Guided Reading Level, etc.). You could spend hours searching for books' levels, labelling them, and organizing your library. This is time that could be better spent on other more important tasks.

2. Levels don't always provide an accurate picture.

Level ratings are based on readability and required decoding skills, but there is so much more to determining a "just right" book. Often a reader's ability to comprehend at different levels is based on background knowledge and experience with text. Some books that are classified as the right level are way over kids' heads in terms of content. Just because a student can read difficult books doesn't mean they are ready for mature themes and language.

3. Levels should be for teachers' eyes and knowledge only.

We all know it's important for teachers to assess students for their strengths and challenges. And reading levels can provide teachers with valuable data for informing instruction. However, that information should be considered privileged. Making reading levels public knowledge encourages comparison and competition among students instead of encouraging students to focus on their own growth.

4. Making their own choices empowers students.

Donalyn Miller, passionate proponent of allowing students to make their own book choices and author of The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child, says, "While children are learning the skills of reading, they must also develop a positive reading identity or they will not become lifelong readers." She adds, "Removing, defining, limiting, or rejecting children's reading choices disempowers them and creates negative attitudes toward reading-and most likely, school."

5. Students need to learn to trust their own intuition.

In a recent article published in School Library Journal, "Thinking Outside the Bin: Why Labeling Books by Reading Level Disempowers Young Readers," Pernille Ripp, author of Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child, says levels have become "labels that restrict our readers and tell them that their reading identity needs to be based on an outside influence-the teacher-and not their own intuition."

Changing the way things have "always" been done is usually a tricky endeavor. But leveling libraries can take away much of a student's agency. Teaching students to take ownership of their growth as readers by allowing them to make choices that are right for them is investing in the 21st-century skills they need.
What's your take on leveled classroom libraries? Come share on our WeAreTeachers HELPLINE! And check out these books that answer all of your questions about teaching reading.

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Organizing Your Classroom Library by Level? Here's Why You Might Reconsider

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Leveled libraries were once standard practice (and in some districts required), but in recent years there has been considerable pushback about their place in the classroom. Many teachers and literacy professionals now feel that leveled libraries do more harm than good.

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"A teacher's tool, not a child's label."

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"A teacher's tool, not a child's label."

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Leveled reading systems are popular in many school districts but are they doing more harm than good?