What Students Should Know About Their Reading Levels

Reading levels are imperative because they keep both texts and teachers organized.  As for texts, the levels are from least complex to most complex and, as for teachers, they track where each of his or her many students are in their reading development.  But although this said, a certain attitude should be upheld (by the teacher) so that students don’t feel the impression of being “rated” or “ranked”, but are instead excited to be pushing themselves up to being better readers!  This is what students should know about their reading level; they are increasing their skills all of the time and it is something to celebrate!  The feeling of being “rated” or “ranked” can have a negative effect on some children because they can consequently feel compared to their friends and peers.  And obviously, something negative is not going to positively affect the child towards their goals.  So we, as future teachers of MANY future students, must learn how to treat reading levels so that those students, too, have the right attitudes about them.

Now here’s the “DO” part.  But first, simply put, we want students to feel confident, invigorated, and empowered about their own learning and success. :) We must know how we want our students to feel about their ever-growing reading development before we can discuss what the teacher does in a classroom to create this positive learning atmosphere.  So now that we know, finally, here are different ways a teacher can produce what reading levels really mean to his or her students:

• Talk and discuss with students how your classroom library works
• Have class meetings about how they are pushing themselves up to being better readers and that they should have a flexibility through a range of levels
• Have a “Try This Out” basket between each few sections of levels filled with books that are author-based, different genres, easier reads, slightly more complex texts, etc. to make risks seem less scary, push growth further, and increase confidence
• Set goals for those who need motivation; better yet, have students set their own goals!
• Have texts that are HUGE and WAY ABOVE all of the students’ levels and put them on a table in your classroom library so that they are intrigued and excited about what seems to big and mysterious

Share Your Thoughts:  What other ideas do you have that can uphold empowerment in students with their ever-growing reading?

~a free picture from Google images