The debate over whether or not we should be labeling books is a difficult for me to decide on. I think that there are pros and cons for both sides but I am leaning more towards labeling them. By leveling books it gives teachers a baseline to build upon and allows them to try to gauge what content might be too difficult or too easy, depending on the child. Levels helps us organize books by difficulty, so we know if the book is appropriate for a student prior to giving it to them. I have seen it be beneficial in a class where the students in the second grade were given three different books, one below their level, one on their level and one slightly above their level and they chose which one they wanted to read during their indented reading time. I hadn't seen anything like this before my observation hours.
By books leveled it helps teacher differentiate and assess each student based on their needs. Teachers can see after assessing a student that they may be a couple grade levels behind their peers and offer them books that are more realistic and manageable for the student.
The only con I could think of for leveling books would have been so students can't tell who's behind or who is ahead of the class.
Just doing a devil's advocate post:
ReplyDeleteYou highlight something by saying "labeling the books". Are we labeling the children when we level the books? Just reading books at an instructional, independent, or frustration level will not affect "how many grade levels" students are behind.
Vocabulary and comprehension are not something diagnostic assessments are good at measuring. While building these competencies in students through text based talk and analysis we must also t know if they have mastered skills in decoding.
There are often more efficient and sometimes more enjoyable ways to build up decoding and word knowledge skills than reading leveled books.
Furthermore we know that background knowledge, motivation, and context are central to understanding texts. If lower readers are destined to read "independent and instructional texts" are we condemning them to a lifetime of being behind peers who move on to more complex topics that require more complex texts?