Literacy Lab is supplementary literacy support for a period of time. In that time, the goals of AIS are to develop specific reading skills and strategies, to support student efforts with reading and writing in all their base classes, and to help students develop a life-long love of reading.

What is a Guided Reading Level?

Guided reading is used in the classroom in small-group instruction and for independent reading. When your child enters a new grade he or she is assessed and assigned a guided reading level based on word-knowledge, comprehension, and fluency. The levels range alphabetically from A to Z, with level A representing the lowest level and level Z the highest. This allows the teacher to work closely with each student to help them become better readers by introducing them to increasingly challenging books while meeting the varying instructional needs of each child in the room through guided reading. (Scholastic.com)

How do Guided Reading Levels work?

Books are assigned guided reading levels based on several general expectations and capabilities of a reader. As the levels progress, the books become more difficult. Each level is based upon the increasing complexity of ten benchmark common book characteristics that readers encounter at all stages of the reading process from when your child picks up his or her first book through the time when he or she becomes a fluent reader. These guided reading categories are:

    • Genre: The type of the book

    • Text Structure: How the book is organized and presented

    • Content: The subject matter of a book

    • Themes and Ideas: The big ideas that are communicated by the author

    • Language and Literary Features: The types of writing techniques employed by the writer

    • Sentence Complexity: How challenging the syntax is of each sentence

    • Vocabulary: The frequency of new words introduced in the book

    • Words: The ease at which the words in the book can be figured out or decoded by a reader

    • Illustrations: The correlation and consistency of images and pictures in the books to the words printed on the page

    • Book and Print Features: The physical aspects of the printed word on the page.

I.C. Fountas and G.S. Pinnell. 2011. The Continuum of Literacy Learning, Grades PreK-8, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

RESEARCH TO SUPPORT A LEVELED READING INSTRUCTION

Struggling readers need a great deal of high-success reading. These experiences make it possible for them to teach themselves by using strategic actions effectively.

| Allington, 2009; Share & Stanovich, 1995 |

Students who have high motivation to read and well-developed reading interests gain reading comprehension much faster than do less motivated readers.

| Guthrie, Wigfield, Metslaa, Cox, 1999 |

Reading a variety of genres helps students understand text structure and other patterns in ways that increase comprehension.

| Donovan & Smolkin, 2002; Newkirk, 1989 |

Self-regulated individuals have control over their own learning and are more likely to be able to direct their attention and transfer learning to the solving of new problems.

| Dorn & Soffos, 2001 |

One of the most important reasons that both children and adults read is for pleasure.

| Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000 |

"Becoming an expert in almost anything requires literally years of work. People will do this only if they have some initial success, enjoy the work, and are supported by the social climate.”

| Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, Hoffman, 2006 |