What can you do now that you’ve heard “Your child has a lexile score of…”?
Instilling the LOVE of reading
The most important component of reading is instilling the love of reading by exposing your child to a wide range of genres, levels, and text sources. A lexile level is just a guide or starting point and its true intention is to guide a teacher’s reading instruction.
Your child’s teacher may assign homework with reading passages at specific reading levels, but it’s important for students to engage with texts that aren’t leveled as most books in bookstores and libraries won’t be.
We interact with texts of all kinds throughout our day, including nutrition labels, newspaper articles, advertisements, recipes, and road signs. The real world does not provide children with texts at their level all the time and we need to work with them to develop reading strategies to cope when they come across more challenging texts.
More importantly, we want our readers to develop their love of reading, along with skills and critical thinking. This may include our children seeking out and re-reading favorites or comfort books that might be lower leveled or trying harder books that might be about their favorite subject.
The power of reading!
The love of reading is instilled in our children when we form that bond of sharing a good story together. It is not determined by a lexile level or a topic of study in school; it comes when we connect a text with ourselves or when the words on a page can transcend time and place. Those are the precious moments of reading. When we find these moments we become life long readers who learn how to navigate any text that is presented to us.
“We are not here to lead a child’s reading journey, but rather here to teach them the tools to create their map.” – Pernille Ripp
Adapted by: Michelle Young ~3-5 Resource Teacher~Kamehameha Schools,Kea’au
Original Source: Eisenberg, Jill; 5 Strategies to Help Parents Navigate Lexile; Exploring Children’s Books Through the Lens of Diversity; Sept. 14, 2014