WHAT ARE GUIDED READING LEVELS?
We have a wide variety of leveled books by many different publishers, but what do those levels actually mean? Beecher Road School uses an alphabetic system of Guided Reading Levels that works across the board with all publishers.
Books are assigned certain levels based on several general expectations and capabilities of a reader. As the levels progress, the books become more difficult. Each level is based upon the increasing complexity of ten benchmark common book characteristics that readers encounter at all stages of the reading process from when your child picks up his or her first book through the time when he or she becomes a fluent reader. These guided reading categories are:
- Genre: The type of the book
- Text Structure: How the book is organized and presented
- Content: The subject matter of a book
- Themes and Ideas: The big ideas that are communicated by the author
Language and Literary Features: The types of writing techniques employed by the writer
- Sentence Complexity: How challenging the syntax is of each sentence
- Vocabulary: The frequency of new words introduced in the book
- Words: The ease at which the words in the book can be figured out or decoded by a reader
- Illustrations: The correlation and consistency of images and pictures in the books to the words printed on the page
- Book and Print Features: The physical aspects of the printed word on the page.
While there are some websites that list titles in certain levels, keep in mind that book publishers have their own individual levels.
If your child’s teacher recommends a specific reading level, please ask a librarian to help you identify the Guided Reading Level (GRL).
Our bins are labeled by reading level; please be considerate and place books back in the correct bin. Thanks!