Whether you’re a parent or a teacher, you want the best reading books for your children. There is a noticeable variance in the quality of reading material used in primary schools, both from a literacy and wider learning perspective.
Reading books used for guided and solo reading in class or at home, especially at primary level, often focus heavily on a structured reading level protocol. Whilst this serves a purpose, could there be other considerations for learning and personal development?
Primary reading books
Primary school children improve their reading skills by progressively reading more and more challenging texts. At each level, children encounter more complexity in one way or another. This might be more text for every picture, smaller text, bigger words, longer multi-clause sentences, longer stories, more complex sentence structures and increasingly difficult nouns, verb and adjectives. There are many variables!
Here’s the thing:
If children are reading often and pushing their abilities, with the right support, they will improve their skills. This is why the “guided” part of guided reading is so important in the early stages and it’s no surprise that children who spend more time reading at home with their parents tend to have higher IQs as well as reading ability. So it begs the question, should we rely so heavily on the colour-coded, levelled reading books we’re all so used to? Could our children be learning more from books with more meaning than books designed to help them read better?