I remember the year we started using the Scholastic Reading Inventory to determine a students’ lexile levels. What a gift we’d been given; we’d now be matching students successfully with just right books. Independent reading would be a success!
While the lexile level is important, especially for struggling middle school readers, we discovered over the years that the lexile level is just one piece to use in guiding students to self-select books. As my youngest child, a 4th grader, was showing me the book he selected for independent reading, I asked him why he picked it. His matter of fact response, “It’s on my level,” reminded me of my first years using lexile levels to get kids reading.
In Reading in the Wild, Donalyn Miller reminds us of the importance of considering more than just lexile bands in helping students select books. I remember a GT 6th grade class going to the library, proud of their outstanding lexile levels. After completing a card catalog search using their individual band based on the results of their SRI assessment, they were often disappointed by the choice of titles that fell into the band for a student reading above grade level with a 1300 lexile level. For those children, are lexile levels the most important factor to use in selecting a book?
Some quality books that I’ve read as an adult and have taught me about history would not have made their list. For example, titles like The Kite Runner with an 840 lexile level, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society with a 930 lexile, and All the Light we Cannot See with an 880 lexile level would have been below these students’ lexile band. While these books would be below the lexile band for these students reading above grade level, the students can still grow as readers through the more complicated plots, character development, and multiple themes presented in these novels.
On the other hand, an 8th grader with a 550 lexile level would most likely struggle with any of these titles. Our goal with our struggling readers is to help them grow as readers; for these students lexile bands are important, but we need to look at more than just the lexile.
In Reading in the Wild, Miller points out, readers select reading material according to their
- interests
- preferences
- background knowledge
- purposes for reading
- personal motivation
How can we help students go beyond just a lexile level in choosing books? How can we model for them how we use our own interests to guide our selections? How can we share with them our own purposes for reading? How can we let them know what motivates us as successful readers? How can they share their own selection process with one another?
My conversation about my son’s book selection didn’t end with him only telling me it was on his level. He went on to say it was a book about a dog, and he was thinking of our dog Kipper when he chose it. While it was on his level, he was going beyond just using his level as his criteria for book selection. He was doing what life-long readers do.
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