On the Level
By Maryann Manning

I love to hang out in the children's section of bookstores and talk to kids. My conversations make me glad I'm a teacher and the discussions make me think about teaching reading. Recently while browsing at my local bookstore, a girl said, "I want to read more books by Eve Bunting but I can't because all the ones I have left to read by her are not on my level." Another boy asked if I could help him find a book. He said, "I want to learn more about the great fire in San Francisco but the teacher said all the books in the library are above my level. I can't check out the books at school so I want to buy a book." I spent time wondering how his interest in the early l900s had been kindled. These interactions with students spurred my thinking about just how far we should go with the leveling of books. Then, when a reading coach friend of mine wrote me an e-mail about her concerns about the misuses of leveling, I knew that other teachers were thinking about the same issues.

Too much of a good thing?
Although I am a proponent of a teacher having many books leveled, I think we may have, as the old saying goes, "Carried a good thing too far." Only allowing students to read from one tub of books or just one level or one color dot may make reading a chore that kids want to avoid.

You may be one of the teachers who has spent part of your summer vacation in your classroom leveling every book. I'm sure you may have also used Gay Su Pinnell and Irene Fountas' important books, Guided Reading: Good First Teaching for All Children (Heinemann, l996, ISBN: 0-435-08863-7) and Guided Readers & Writers (Grades 3-6) (Heinemann, 2000, ISBN: 0-325-00310-6) and accessed websites such as www.fountasandpinnell.com.

You certainly don't have to worry that I'm going to tell you that you wasted your time, because there's a need for students and teachers to have guidance concerning the difficulty of some books. There are differences in the complexity of the texts, the vocabulary and, maybe most important, the notion of prior knowledge. I feel that many young readers especially need the support that the words in their vocabulary provide, as well as the comfort of shorter sentences. Reluctant readers also need books that provide the security of text that they can easily read.

Guided reading
You know that just because a book is on a student's level doesn't mean the student can or should read the book. I'm a mature reader, and yet if you gave me a book on my level about off-shore oil drilling, I couldn't read it. Maybe I could pronounce the words, but I couldn't read it if reading is defined as constructing meaning from print. Why? Other than having seen oil rigs in water a few places in the world, I don't have the prior knowledge about any kind of oil drilling to understand the text.

I've found one of the most effective instructional practices to help readers learn new reading strategies is guided reading. Choosing the level of the text is important, and often we change texts because the text is too easy or too hard and doesn't present the right amount of challenges. As teachers we can benefit from guidance concerning the level of difficulty of books we are using for guided reading. This doesn't mean that we can't judge the level of difficulty; it's just that other teachers and authors have done some of the very time-consuming work for us.

Is it making sense?
Practicing reading strategies can be accomplished through having your students do a portion of their independent reading on leveled texts. We want students to be continually challenged in much of their reading because we want them to read more difficult concepts, vocabulary and text. As a strong proponent of the self-selection of a majority of texts, I know that many students need to be strongly encouraged and sometimes pushed to read more difficult text. I have some conflict in my thinking about when we should insist on a book that is "just right" and when we should let students self-select.

Please don't do what I used to do. When I began teaching, one of the many practices I wish I didn't have to admit that I used was the "five finger" method of selecting a book. I actually told my students to read the first page of the book and put one finger down for each work they didn't know. If they found five words on the page they didn't know, the book was too hard for them. I now know that I should have said, "Read a couple of pages and then ask yourself if the text is making sense. Can you understand what you are reading?"

The books upstairs
Having commercial companies assign a level can help us when we are ordering new books for our classroom. It all sounds very easy to check the level of a book and then order it, but there's a problem. There are different systems, so you have to do some studying to ascertain the corresponding match between and among levels.

My thinking about leveling takes me back to when I was a child. Please allow me to reminisce and tell you how when I was a little girl growing up on a Nebraska farm, the Norfolk Public Library had two floors of books. As with many libraries, the basement was the children's section and the upstairs was the adult section. Like many of you, when I was nine or 10, I decided I wanted to read the books upstairs and I didn't want the librarians to tell me I couldn't read the adult books.

I remember making up lots of excuses about how I was studying a topic that didn't have references in the children's section. The wonderful librarians didn't tell me the books on the first floor were too hard or that I was too immature (probably true) for the topics on the first floor. They selectively brought down books on my topics to feed my thirst for reading. Also, when I was finally able to read books on the first floor, they didn't tell me that I couldn't go back down to the basement and find easier books when I wanted to read or reread for pleasure.

I try to be conscious of levels but examine reasons for rules I have about who can read what book during independent reading. Student choice should take precedence over a book's level.

Maryann Manning is on the faculty of the School of Education, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Updated October 2009
March 2006, Vol.36, No.6