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Leveling Chart | Scholastic Guided Reading Program for the Classroom

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Reading Level Chart

Booksource knows that reading levels can serve as a helpful tool for educators. Use this Reading Level Chart to better understand how the common leveling systems correlate to one another and match students to texts that can be read with success. To start shopping for books by reading level, click on your desired Grade, Guided Reading or Lexile Level below.

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Tips for parents.

Page updated on 03/12/2020

• Teach your children about the value of reading. Show the connection of reading with their success in school and other activities. Give examples of the book's positive impact on your own life or the lives of others.
• Draw the children's attention to the statements of prominent people about reading. Do not miss the facts confirming the role of reading in the life of those who are authoritative for the student: athletes, actors, TV stars. Raise the prestige of books and reading in the child's mind. nine0008
• If your child reads in his spare time from school, ask what kind of book is in his hands. Look into it. If, in your opinion, the book is inhumane, discuss it with the child, evaluate it from the standpoint of good and evil, offer him a good book.
• If your child is just taking his first steps into the world of reading, rejoice in every word he reads as a victory. Do not draw his attention to reading errors. Do it discreetly. Take only suitable books for the first readings - bright, with large print, where there are a lot of pictures and a plot that is interesting to follow. nine0008
• Encourage your child to visit the library and its activities. Take it with you when you go to the library yourself. Learn to use its funds and reference apparatus. Consult with a librarian in choosing books for your child. Trust his expert advice.
• Subscribe to magazines for your child (in his name!) based on his interests and hobbies. Let the child together with you choose the desired magazine or newspaper from the Rospechat catalog. He will read more readily the periodicals chosen by himself. nine0008
• Enjoy reading yourself and develop in your children an attitude towards reading as a pleasure.
• Let the children see how you enjoy reading yourself: quote, laugh, memorize passages, share what you read, etc.
• Show that you value reading by buying books, giving them yourself and receiving them as gifts. Let the children choose their own books and magazines (from the library, bookstore, etc.).
• In a conspicuous place, hang a list that will reflect the progress of the child in reading (how many books have been read, and for how long). nine0008
• Set aside a special place for reading at home (nook with shelves, etc.).
• There should be a children's library in the house.
• Collect books on topics that will inspire children to read more about the topic (such as books about dinosaurs or space travel).
• Invite the children to read the book the movie is based on before or after watching the movie.
• Take turns reading stories or funny stories to each other. Entertain yourself instead of watching TV. nine0008
• Encourage your child to make friends with children who love to read.
• Solve crossword puzzles with children and give them to them.
• Encourage children to read aloud whenever possible to develop their skill and self-confidence.
• Ask your children often about the books they read.
• Encourage reading of any type of periodical material, even horoscopes, comics, TV series reviews - let the children read anything!
• It is better for children to read short stories than long stories: then they get a sense of completeness and satisfaction. nine0008
• Let the children read in bed every night before going to sleep.

Reading aloud guide. A handbook for loving parents, caring grandparents, and intelligent educators

Jim Trelease's Read-Aloud Handbook

edited and revised by Cyndi Giorgis

Translated from English by Marina Aromshtam and Olga Lisenkova

, 1989, 1995, 2001, 2006, 2013

© The James J. Trelease Read-Aloud Royalties Revocable Trust, 2019

© M. Aromshtam, O. Lisenkova, translation into Russian, 2021

© Russian edition, design. Azbuka-Atticus Publishing Group LLC, 2021

CoLibri®

* * *

Reading is the heart of education. The acquisition of knowledge in almost any subject is associated with reading. To understand the essence of a mathematical problem, the student must read it. If a child is not able to read a text in a textbook on physics or social studies, how will he answer the questions after the paragraph? nine0003

Since reading is the core around which learning is built, we can say that it is the key to longevity. The American non-profit organization RAND at one time investigated the factors that affect life expectancy - racial, gender, geographic, educational, marital status, diet, smoking, and even church attendance. It turned out that the main determining factor is education. Another researcher studied the era of a hundred years ago, when universal compulsory education was introduced in the United States. It turned out that each year of training prolongs a person's life by an average of one and a half years. The same pattern emerged in other countries. And scientists studying Alzheimer's disease have found that reading in childhood and expanding vocabulary can be preventive measures against the devastating effects of this disease. You will find more information about this on the pages of this book. nine0003

Summarizing all of the above, it can be argued that it is reading (and not watching videos or exchanging text messages) that is the most significant factor in social life. The formula that I give here may seem too simple, but its every statement is substantiated and documented.

Jim Treleese

Reading aloud is a joyful experience for both child and parent. Trelease's book offers helpful clues as to why this experience is so pleasurable for both parties, and how to achieve this effect. nine0003

Arthur Schlesinger, historian, writer, politician

This updated and expanded classic reading aloud guide is a real source of inspiration for parents, teachers and anyone who loves children and cares about their future.

The Denver Post

The most important thing we as parents can do for our children is to read to them as often as possible from early childhood. Reading is the road to success in school and in life. If a child learns to love books, he will love to learn. nine0003

Laura Bush, Former School Librarian, Former First Lady of the United States

As I read this treasure book, I became more and more fascinated by its content... I give my unconditional recommendation.

Dear Abby, the iconic American response column to readers' letters

Foreword to the Russian edition

What needs to be done to make a book enter a child's life?

Read aloud to him. nine0003

Not that this was an incredible discovery. Many of us have been read as children. Many of us, having become parents and teachers, read to our own children and students. But this was something taken for granted, almost a routine of life for any intelligent family, where, due to unspoken rules and Soviet traditions, a special attitude to books was cultivated.

And suddenly it turned out that reading aloud is not just a way to spend time with a child: it is a powerful tool of socio-pedagogical influence with far-reaching consequences. It is a way to transform social reality. nine0003

A new understanding of reading aloud emerged in the 1980s with the book The Reading Aloud Guide by American author Jim Treleese. I should probably call him "Educator" with a capital P, even though Treleese had no teaching background and never worked as a teacher. Apparently, he also did not think about an academic career, having graduated from the university with a bachelor's degree. Jim Treleese enjoyed and rather successfully (judging by the awards he received) worked as a journalist and artist for a regional newspaper in Springfield. True, before starting his journalistic career, Jim served in the army as a military analyst. nine0003

Perhaps his background in analytics played an important role when Jim Treleese began to sort out his impressions of communicating with sixth graders, whom he met as a volunteer in extracurricular courses and told about the profession of journalism. It turned out that among children there are readers and those who do not read. For some reason, the existence of non-reading children was a discovery for Jim Trelez and greatly upset him (apparently, the interest of schoolchildren in journalism, combined with an unwillingness to read, looked like a glaring paradox). nine0003

And Jim began to THINK about it.

Reading children... Where do they come from? It turned out that for many children who read, school teachers read during the lessons ...

And then he found a study that substantiated the benefits of reading aloud. For people with ideas about the value of critical thinking, the rationale for certain actions is incredibly important. A well-founded judgment is the best argument for promoting an idea into practice. And Jim, using his journalistic skills, recounted his “discovered” research, providing it with comments and examples from his own experience. The result was a small 32-page brochure. In the same 19In 1979, a pamphlet called The Read-Aloud Handbook was published by Weekly Reader Books. But Jim Treleese had to pay for the publication himself.

It turned out that the book is in demand. In 1982, the "Guide" came out, albeit in paperback, but in one of the leading American publishers Penguin Books - and produced the effect of an exploding bomb.

In 1983, the book entered the New York Times bestseller list.

Just think: a book on how and why to read to a child has become a bestseller! nine0003

From that moment the triumphal procession of the book around the world began. It was published in English-speaking countries - both in the UK and in Australia. It has been translated into Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Indonesian. The book was quoted at every opportunity, and now on the Internet you can stumble upon publications like "20 quotes from the book of Jim Treleese ...", "32 most important quotes from the book of Jim Treleese ...".

The Manual was reprinted seven times, and each new edition was marked "revised": true to himself, Jim Treleese included references to new reading research. nine0003

This is not surprising. In the 1980s, 1,200 research projects on the topic of "children's reading" were launched annually in the United States. And in 1985, the Reading Commission was established in America, whose task was to collect material, analyze and develop recommendations for the development of children's reading literacy. The report of the commission, titled "Becoming a Reading Nation," contained important data and no less important conclusions, and Jim Treleese could not help but react to this event: in 1989, the third revised edition of his book was published with references to the results of the commission's work. In the same year, the American International Reading Association included The Handbook in its list of the eight greatest books on education produced in the 80s, and the year before, Jim Treleese was awarded the Jeremiah Ludington, founder of the association, for his outstanding contribution to the field of educational publishing. publishers of educational paperbacks. nine0003

The 2006 edition was already a mature, well-structured teaching aid, and included chapters on book start, the stages of reading aloud, and the do's and don'ts of reading to a child. It also included an annotated list of books selected by Jim Treleese for adult and child reading, which Jim himself called "The Book Treasury."

* * *

The name of Jim Treleese and the mention of his book in our country first appeared in 2009, in the abstract collection “Reading from the sight, from the screen and “by ear”: the experience of Russia and other countries” (M.: Russkaya school library association). It was from this collection that Russian-speaking experts learned both about Treleese's book and about the Reading Commission, created in response to the concerns of the American pedagogical community in connection with the reading crisis (at that moment it was associated with the rapid development of television: by the mid-80s in every American the family had an average of three televisions), and that this crisis can be countered with something. nine0003

And now, ten years after the first mention, we have the opportunity to get acquainted with the eighth edition of the book, which was published in the USA quite recently - in 2018. True, the eighth edition was prepared for publication not by Jim Treleese himself, but by children's literature specialist and university lecturer Cindy Georgis. Probably, you should not be surprised at this, just look at the date of birth of Jim Treleese - 1941. Apparently, this work is important for him not only and not so much as a text written by himself, but as a conductor of a certain idea: it is necessary to convey to parents and teachers the data of new research in the field of children's reading, it is necessary not to abandon attempts to teach as many people as possible to read aloud, because it can change their lives. And Cindy Georgis shares his ideas about the role of reading aloud in education and is a recognized expert in the field of children's books. nine0003

But, for all the relevance of the topic and general problems, for all its "practical orientation", translated into Russian "Guide" is not at all a simple and easy book.

First of all, this is explained by American specifics: the author appeals to the experience of American parents and teachers, talks about discussions on the problems of American school education, refers to studies conducted by American scientists, and lists of recommended books include works only by American authors, a significant part which are unknown to us. nine0003

But this feature of the book may even arouse more interest in it. On the one hand, it can be read in accordance with the intention of the authors (Jim Treleese and Cindy Georgis) - in order to gain additional arguments in favor of reading aloud, write out certain maxims or practical algorithms, take note of some books (how many , it turns out, translated into Russian!).

And you can consider the "Guide" as a kind of culturological journey: this, then, is how the problems of reading are understood in American society! These are the kinds of discussions that arise there, these are the decisions school principals and individual teachers can make! This is the role libraries play in American cities and towns! And here is an interesting reading-aloud experience in the American army (even more interesting is the practice of reading aloud in British prisons - a rare case when Cindy Georgis refers to a non-American experience). nine0003

All this is incredibly interesting material for analysis. For example, for the authors of this book, there is an obvious relationship between a child's reading level and the social status of the family in which he grows up. And the degree of development of reading skills largely determines the child's ability to learn, his ability to move from one educational level to another, get a "good education" and, as a result, take a place in society that allows him to "earn good money." There is a direct and irrevocable connection here: education in the United States plays the role of a social elevator. So by helping children learn to read (and reading aloud is seen as one of the most important ways to encourage independent reading), American educators and librarians are helping them rise to a new level of social well-being. And reading aloud becomes almost the main way to fight ... against poverty! nine0003

Such a "social" turn of the topic is completely unexpected for the Russian reader. When we talk about reading aloud, we think of anything but fighting poverty. Our reading is loaded with a completely different meaning.

Yes, indeed, in every intelligent Soviet family, books were cultivated and read aloud to children. But, we will notice, only to small children. And only until the time when they learned to read on their own. The true value was not at all shared experiences when reading aloud, but reading to oneself, because with it a person acquired an additional degree of freedom - not external, but internal. I don’t know if the image of a child who has covered himself with a blanket and in the darkness of this cozy cave, illuminating the pages of a book with a flashlight, will say anything to an American teacher. Perhaps such a "niche of peace", such a secret individual space is characteristic only of the child of the Soviet era. And with such a reading experience, some sort of “History without an End” by Michael Ende, where reading was seen as an escape from reality, fit in perfectly. And the statuses of "a person who reads" and "a person who is socially prosperous" in our country were not directly connected and still are not connected. nine0003

Perhaps that is why Jim Treleese's book came to us so late - about ten years later than the idea itself. And the idea took root, because in the late 90s in our country they suddenly started talking about the crisis of reading: they say, what is it? Kids today don't read at all! What to do?

Unlike the Americans with their 1,200 reading research projects a year, our public anxiety was only confirmed by the sharp drop in library attendance at the start of the 2000s. But these "data" were opposed by others - related to the intensively developing book market and the ability to freely purchase books for personal use, which was so difficult under Soviet rule. nine0003

And what we called the “children’s reading crisis”, in my opinion, was due to a much more serious phenomenon: we suddenly felt a cultural gap between people of the “Soviet mix” (or “anti-Soviet”, in this context there is not much difference between them ) and "new" children. It turned out that the “new” children (just like the Americans) do not at all strive, armed with a flashlight, to hide with a book in a “cave” from a blanket. And, what is especially unpleasant, they have little interest in the books that we read in childhood. They generally have a completely different attitude to information and education. And their ideas about the "niche of peace" are completely different. nine0003

So reading aloud was almost the only way for us to bridge the resulting cultural gap. If you want, the opportunity to preserve with children (and grandchildren) a common cultural identity. What we can read to them will become part of their cultural baggage, and will unite us with them.

In the wake of such aspirations in the early 2000s, we really liked the book of the French writer Daniel Pennack "Like a Novel" - a personal experience of dealing with non-reading teenagers and the opportunity to turn the tide through reading aloud. We hoped that such an approach would, among other things, teach us to accept children as they "turned out. " But Pennack's provocative and harsh thesis - "The child has the right not to read" - plunged us into despondency, despite all the efforts we made to come to terms with it. nine0003

I think that for both Jim Treleese and Cindy Georgis such a statement would be completely unacceptable. It's like saying, "A child has the right to live in poverty" or even "A child has the right to go to jail." You demand from the child that he clean the room or wash before bed, even if he does not want to do it, writes Cindy Georgis. And the habit of reading is no less important for life than the habit of personal hygiene.

Something tells me that such a position is more acceptable to Russian readers. nine0003

In other words, the book by Jim Treleese and Cindy Georgis gives a serious impetus to reflection - just as its appearance at one time became the starting point for an entire international movement, which, however, did not affect European countries and the countries of the former USSR. Only the Poles fell under the influence of this book. It was not translated into Polish - apparently it was read in English - but in 2001 Poland launched the national campaign "All Poles Read to Children". By 2007, 87% of the country's population knew about it, and 37% of parents claimed to read to their children. True, it was about children of preschool age. Also a lot. nine0003

In fact, the most important thing is to give the child the right cultural start. And the "Guide", without any doubt, has a great power of persuasion. I would even say that after reading the book, you understand that the ideas presented in it have simply eaten into your brain. This is how they are presented there: they convince you, and they speak, and they set you up, and they call you to action. And you naively thought that even without any "Guidelines" you are adept at reading aloud...

So reading this book is also an interesting experiment set on yourself and helping you move to a new level of progressive parenthood. nine0003

Marina Aromshtam,

writer, teacher, translator, creator of the website www.papmambook.ru for those who read to children published in Russian are marked in the text with a special sign ★.

Cindy Georgis reads aloud to second graders during Dr. Seuss' Birthday General Reading Day (March 2)

The 8th edition of the Reading Aloud Guide is dedicated to two Jims:

to Jim Treleese for his passion for reading aloud and for his educational work in this field. Jim, I am forever indebted to you for allowing me to share this incredible legacy with you.

to Jim Kruger for love and endless support over the years. You are the best science assistant in the world. I am grateful to you for reading and rereading this work, for your advice and editing of the new edition. You and I are a great team! nine0003

Cindy Georgis

It is important that your baby's first encounters with a book bring him pleasure. Only then will the child want to repeat this experience - both in the near future and in the future. Our ultimate goal is to grow a lifelong reader

Acknowledgments Cindy Georgis

When you get the chance to rewrite one of the most famous and authoritative books on reading aloud, nothing is more important than the support of loved ones, colleagues, teachers, children, librarians and editors. nine0003

I would like to express my deep gratitude:

to my parents, Donna Zanetti and Glenn Martens. If only they had lived to see me rise to this incredible new level of professional development! My parents did not have a higher education, but they managed to instill a love of reading in me and my sister Glenda. As a child, my mother read books to us, and my father read magazines and the daily press, involving us in a discussion of a variety of issues. They did exactly what needs to be done and what I talk about in this book; nine0003

- to my past and present students. They let me know time and time again that reading aloud together brings people together. I read books to six-year-olds, nineteen-year-old boys and girls, and people over the age of forty. The applause that bursts out of your listeners after reading the picture book is amazing;

to my friends, old and new, who shared their reading stories with me. I want to give special thanks to Melissa Olans Antinoff, Kathleen Armstrong, Jim Bailey, Diane Crawford, Matt de la Peña, Charity Delach, Peter Delach, Christine Draper, Sean Dudley, Alma S. Baca Hernandez, Clara Lackey, Mark Lackey, Erica and Richard McCallum , Tiffany Nay, Elisha O'Brien, Jasmine E. Rich-Arnold, Scott Riley, Maria Rue, Jessica Saad, Francisco Sanchez, Megan Sloan and Jimma Teidlek; nine0003

to my wonderful friends and colleagues Nancy Johnson and Marie LeJeune, not only for their stories, but also for understanding the importance of the work I undertook. I cannot express how much I value our friendship;

to children's book publishers and marketers: Laurie Benton, Terry Borzumato-Greenberg, Lucy Del Priore, Lisa DiSarro, Cathy Halata, Emily Huddleson, Angus Killick, Neil Porter, Lisette Serrano, Dina Sherman, Victoria Stapleton and Jaime Wong. You were ready at any moment to give me friendly support and offer the books I needed for the work; nine0003

, to children's writers Rosemary Wells and Kate DiCamillo, longtime readers of reading aloud. Rosemary wrote the book Read to Your Bunny and launched a campaign of the same name to encourage parents to read aloud to their children for 20 minutes each day. And Kate is not only a wonderful writer and storyteller, but also a National Ambassador for Children's Literature. She never ceases to remind that reading aloud can change someone's life, and her voice is heard by children, parents, educators and librarians around the world; nine0003

to my editors Catherine Court and Victoria Sevan. From the moment we first met, I knew that you, like me, love this book with all your heart and would like parents, teachers, librarians, all members of the community to once again take it in their hands and experience its beneficial effects.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my husband Jim Krueger.

---

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