The American School of Kuwait's Reading Levels Chart

Reading Fluency

General range of adequate reading rates by grade level for fluent English speakers.

WCPM=Words Correct Per Minute

**Average Words per Week Growth

The Next Step to Guided Reading

The following PDF excerpt from The Next Step to Guided Reading (full book found in Professional Development page) contains behaviors, strategies, and skills by level to assist in planning literacy lessons and guide acceleration decisions.

Online Resources for reading comprehension

Freeology: Free reading comprehension worksheets, graphic organizers, and strategies for teaching reading.

GIST Template: Template can be printed and used for students to apply the GIST reading strategy.

Lexile Analyzer: This free tool evaluates the readability of text that you enter or scan.

NEWSELA: This is a free resource teachers can use to expose students to expository text via news articles on topics such as war & peace, science, money, law, and the arts. In addition, thelexile level of each article can be adjusted to allow for easy differentiation of instruction.

Picture This!: This resource can be used to identify picture books appropriate for teaching math, science, language arts, and social studies. The picture books recommendations are organized by content area and topic.

Reading A-Z: Subscription required – leveled text, native language text.

Reading Resource: Great site for beginning or struggling readers and for defeating dyslexia

ReadWords: This is a free collection of hundreds of reading passages for grades K-12 teachers can use with students to practice reading comprehension.

Scholastic Listen & Read: These are 15 free online non-fiction books for K-2 students to listen and read along with.

Storyline Online: This is a great read aloud resource for teachers. It contains a selection of short illustrated books that are read aloud to students.

The Literacy Shed: One of my favorite online resources to use in the classroom. Contains a plethora of short animated videos with no words and comprehension strategies to review with the students before and after viewing.

Thinking Maps Templates: Chart not only explains purpose of each Thinking Map but provides a link to printable templates for each individual Thinking Map.

TIME for Kids: Engaging students in authentic journalism, leveled for each grade.

Book Study Resources

Modeling comprehension strategies is extremely important for readers of all ages. Reading TO and WITH your student or child is vital and is a key component to developing English language fluency.

POETRY

Poetry is an AMAZING resource for readers and visualizing, as well as phonics practice! Poetry offers wonderful opportunities for reading, writing, speaking, and listening practice for ELLs. Poetry also gives students a chance to expand vocabulary knowledge, to play with language, and to work with different rhythms and rhyme patterns. Poetry has many positive effects on literacy development, including paying attention to vocabulary and rhythm develops oral language skills, and the development of oral language skills has a strong correlation to proficiency in reading.

Here are some of my favorite poetry books:

• Creatures of the Earth, Sea and Sky by Georgia Heard
• Color me a Rhyme by Jane Yolen
• 20th Century Children’s Poetry Treasury selected by Jack Prelutsky
• Where the Sidewalk Ends, Falling Up, & A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein- One of the things that makes his poetry so funny for kids is that their mental image is seldom the same as his illustrations. Typically, his illustrations depict the literal meaning of the text. I love to have readers draw their mental image first and then see his.
• COLORIN COLORADO provides an extensive list of poems from different cultures, many are bilingual in English and Spanish, offering poems for a wide-ranging audience.

MAKING MENTAL IMAGES WITH PICTURE BOOKS

Picture books are a fantastic tool to use for students to build new vocabulary and to create mental images in their mind of the text. This list of books is a great way to read engaging stories over again, and can eventually be read without showing the pictures. Kids can draw or verbalize the mental images at various stopping places throughout the text.

• Puddles by Jonathan London
• I’m in Charge of Celebrations by Byrd Baylor
• Owl Moon by Jane Yolen
• Night Sounds, Morning Colors by Rosemary Wells {not currently in print}
• Night in the Country by Cynthia Rylant
• The Salamander Room by Anne Mazer
• See the Ocean by Estelle Condra
• Bedhead by Margie Palatini
• A Bad Case of the Stripes by David Shannon

CONNECTIONS

Text to self – This reminds me of my own life…

Have you ever just had a bad day? I have {many, actually.} Kids can totally relate to Alexander the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst.

We’ve all been embarrassed or afraid we won’t fit in. Ira Sleeps Over by Bernard Waber is a great one with this theme.

You are Special by Max Lucado is another good one about feeling like you don’t measure up. I LOVE the underlying message in this book!

Have you ever wanted “those shoes?” Yes, the shoes that everybody else has, but you don’t. I can SO relate to this one as a kid! Most kids can also relate to Those Shoes by Maribeth Boelts.

A family discovers a stray dog at the park while on a picnic and just can’t seem to get that dog off their minds. Finally, the adopt the dog as their own. Kids who have pets {or want pets} can relate to The Stray Dog by Marc Simont.

Text to text– This reminds me of another book I’ve read/movie I’ve watched…

Thank You, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco and More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby both have the theme of struggle and learning to read.

The Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant and When Lightning Comes in a Jar by Ernest L. Polacco are both wonderful books about family reunions and the fun that family can have together.

Crow Boy by Taro Vashima and The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi are both books about kids from a different country coming into a new school and how they learn to adapt {as well as the kids in the classroom learning to adapt to them.}

Leon and Bob by Simon James {I wish this was still in print!} and Jessica by Kevin Henkes are both about imaginary friends and the power of making a new friend.

Fairy tales are also a GREAT place to do some text to text connections, as there are MANY variations on these texts. It’s fun to read them and compare them.

Text to world– This reminds me this time in history/what’s going on in the world right now…

Follow the Drinking Gourd by Jeanette Winter tells of the Underground Railroad.

The Great Kapok Tree by Lynne Cherry is a creative way to teach kids about the destruction of the rain forest and how we need to take care of our world.

Eve Bunting has several texts that work well for text to world connections, including The Wall {Vietnam War}, Fly Away Home{homelessness/poverty}, A Day’s Work {other cultures}, Dandelions {westward movement in America} and Cheyenne Again {early Native Americans}.

The Day of Ahmed's Secret is one of my favorite children's stories in English told from the perspective of a young boy in Cairo who learns to write his name for the first time.