Matching readers and texts requires more than a single assessment. A knowledgeable teacher in regular conversation with readers is key.
What to expect in this book.
In Part I we discuss Readers, Texts, and Levels—and What It All Means for Comprehension. Parts II and III are set up to help you develop expertise around text characteristics of children’s literature from Levels J–W and to help you see what strong comprehension may look and sound like, goal by goal and skill by skill. I am choosing to focus on this level range because although comprehension assessment and instruction is something that is important for teachers to consider at all levels, around Levels J/K is where there is increased demand on readers to synthesize and accumulate many events and details to understand plot, setting, character, figurative language, and themes in fiction; and to understand main ideas, key details, vocabulary, and text features in nonfiction. Levels J/K is also around where many children begin to read with more accuracy and fluency and where teachers need to devote more attention to comprehension skill development. There are exceptions to this, of course, but it is true for many. For teachers who work with students who are reading independently below Level J, the information in these sections will still be incredibly helpful as you plan other balanced literacy components where they will be listening to or reading texts above their independent reading level (i.e., shared reading, guided reading, readaloud, and so on). I chose to end at level W because most students who are able to read and deeply understand Level W texts will likely also be surefooted in X–Z, and the added challenges they encounter will tend to be more about the content in the book and how much knowledge the reader brings to the text. Again, there are some exceptions but this is generally true. Overall, I hope what’s included in Parts II and III helps you consider readers’ comprehension development within and across text levels and understand what to expect of the texts they are choosing to read.
Part II focuses on fiction texts and readers, and Part III focuses on nonfiction texts and readers. In the first section of each part, I explain what I understand about text levels from my study of qualitative text leveling and from my own immersion in children’s literature, reading dozens of children’s books at each level. I use the four comprehension goals of each genre as a way to organize the discussion of texts. (See page 11 for goals.) While the first half of each part is organized by levels, the second half of each part is organized by goals (e.g., Plot and Setting) and skills (e.g., retelling important events) across the levels, to allow you to see how readers’ comprehension develops. I provide samples of student writing about reading to show what strong comprehension sounds like within each goal, as students move to increasingly challenging texts.
Part IV will offer advice for applying all of this knowledge of texts, readers, levels, and comprehension to the classroom: from establishing classroom libraries and matching students to books, to creating whole-book and short-passage comprehension assessments, to using the information from Parts II and III in your evaluation of student responses to reading and selection of comprehension strategies and methods of teaching.
