Teacher here. If your child tries to read a book and makes 3 or 4 errors on the first page, it’s too hard. You want to let kids have easy books that they can read easily, like when I just feel like reading a People magazine. The instructional level are ones where the kid has read a little more slowly. You want to read aloud chapter books with harder words so the kid learns comprehension skills. You should think about getting a magazine subscription, too. Your best bet is to call the reading teacher at your school and ask for advice, or the children’s librarian. Try a variety of books, like comics, graphic novels, nonfiction, etc.

Rigid guided reading leveling is going out of fashion, just so you know.

I have been an active PTA member and volunteer. Because I love books so much, one of my volunteering tasks was to shop public booksales for "likely to be leveled" books, level them, and give them to teachers for their free-reading book bins.

Because of this personal experience leveling thousands of books, I have some POV on this.

1) At a level K, your child is reading nicely for a 1st grader. At or above many in the grade in normal school districts. Perhaps average for a UMC school district.

2) Childhood classics and picture books are frequently not officially levelable. That is because they may use some vocabulary words that make them unlevelable (too advanced or obscure for the leveling researchers).

3) Leveled books start to become very rare after Level N. (A normal 2nd grade reading level.)

My personal belief is that guided reading is a bit of a buzzkill for the joy of reading.

Let your kid go to the library and pick out books that they want to read. Show them how to use a dictionary or Google for a definition or ask you for word definitions.

A parent is more available to provide support for free reading than a teacher. So, I think you should go for on-level (K) or higher. You most likely won't be able to tell the difference between K and M, maybe between K and N.

I agree with the recommendations about Magic Tree House. For boys, I recommend the "Who Would Win" animal vs. animal series (T-Rex vs. Velociraptor; Orca vs. Shark). My younger son also enjoyed a series about dogs called "Puppy Place".

Anonymous wrote:I’m so confused by guided reading. My kid started in Kindergarten with books brought home in the A-C range. In 1st grade he brings him books labeled K.

But these are mostly books that seem to be sold to teachers in packs. They are not “real” story books. Can anyone tell me how to find real books that would correspond to these levels to have for reading at home?

And if school is sending K books, should I have books here that are lower, K, or higher?

I would buy Teach Your Kid to Read in 100 Easy Lessons to see where they even are and to help build phonics skills. They have a story with each lesson the kids can read. Fountas and Pinnell leveled books go hand in hand with Lucy Caulkins.

Try Junie B Jones or Magic Tree House and see how they do with them. Google 1st grade level books... and go from there. It's not an exact science.

I’m so confused by guided reading. My kid started in Kindergarten with books brought home in the A-C range. In 1st grade he brings him books labeled K.

But these are mostly books that seem to be sold to teachers in packs. They are not “real” story books. Can anyone tell me how to find real books that would correspond to these levels to have for reading at home?

And if school is sending K books, should I have books here that are lower, K, or higher?