Reading Benchmarks

 What are Reading Benchmarks and What Does Text Look Like at Those Levels?

The word “benchmark” means a standard used to measure something. Milestones are like checkpoints or goals that help you to track your child’s learning. Neither are meant to be rigid rules about when your child should be able to do something. They are tools designed to help parents, educators and doctors support a child’s learning based on age-appropriate goals.

As a parent, knowing age-appropriate reading milestones will help you know how to encourage your child, and what types of materials and tasks you can give them. Learning and progression are the goals, not the meticulous tracking of a checklist.

Obsessing over your child’s progress will most likely do more harm than good. Rushing or pushing your child to achieve a particular milestone can leave major gaps in their learning. Children intuitively learn in a way that slowly leads them from one skill to the next. They need to accumulate skills that help them reach milestones, and the best you can do is provide a nurturing learning environment.

What are Reading Levels?

Reading levels are a way of determining the reading skills a student already has. They measure a child’s reading comprehension and fluency, using a variety of factors like phoneme awareness, decoding, vocabulary, and more. Teachers use reading levels to understand what a student knows and what they need to work on. They might also be used to assemble kids into small reading groups.

Many children’s book publishers indicate reading levels on their books, so parents and kids can quickly find options to suit their needs. Choosing the right reading level can be key for many children. If the book they try to read is too difficult for them, they may give up. On the other hand, reading books that are too easy won’t challenge them to build their skills.

Suggestions, Not Rules

It’s extremely important to remember a few things about these levels. First of all, in some cases, the score evaluates the ease of reading of a book, but not the content. For instance, a book like Alice Walker’s The Color Purple earns a 4.0 score on the AR/ATOS scale, indicating it’s written at a fourth grade level. However, most people would agree that the content of this book isn’t right for fourth graders. In fact, this type of book is what’s known as “high-low,” meaning the content and interest level is meant for higher-grade students, while the readability score is low enough that less-skilled readers will find it within their range. (Learn more about high-low books here.)

So while level numbers can be helpful, they aren’t the only indicator you should use when choosing a book. In fact, many teachers caution against using levels to limit kids’ reading choices. If a child is willing to tackle a more difficult book because the subject matter interests them, go ahead and let them! On the other hand, if they want to reread old favorites just for fun, that’s great too. The most important thing is to get students reading, whenever and however possible.

Source- Scholastic