When children come home with report cards that detail their reading progress, parents often find it difficult to interpret where their children stand. However, parents need to know the progress of their child’s reading abilities.

A young child’s early reading practices are largely their parents’ responsibility, from playing sound games to helping them pronounce different words. Parents support their children’s reading progress throughout this time. For this reason, parents must know about their child’s progress in reading while the child is at school.

There are three reading level systems by which teachers grade their students’ reading abilities. Generally, teachers ask their students to read from a book as they follow along. As they read, the teacher keeps track of their clarity and comprehension of what they are reading, and the teacher grades them accordingly.

Guided Reading Levels

According to the different characteristics of books, they are assigned a letter that denotes what level of reading they require to be read successfully by a student. The characteristics upon which the book’s level depends are the text length, vocabulary, and sentence structures of the book.  

The letter “A” is the easiest, so anyone can read a level A book. The better a child can comprehend a higher-level book, the better reader they are.

Reading Recovery

The reading recovery grading system is directed more towards low-achieving first graders who find reading difficult. In contrast to guided reading levels, reading recovery levels use numbers and range from 1-50. Level 1 is naturally considered to be the easiest of all levels and is expected to be passed by many new readers. 

The better the child’s reading progress is, the higher they are expected to score on a scale of 1-50. Good beginner readers often turn out to be great students with outstanding grades in high school and college.

Development Reading Assessment

With this method, a series of leveled books and sheets are designed to assist teachers in the grading of children’s reading abilities. These books are called the Development Reading Assessment (DRA), with which teachers can better analyze a child’s fluency, accuracy, and comprehension levels. 

The levels of progress range from A-80, where A is the easiest of all levels. Students are then determined to either be above the grade level, below the grade level, or significantly below the grade level.

Concluding Thoughts

Parents must be aware of their children’s grades so that they can predict ways to help their children read better and perform better through immersive learning. Most schools use the three main grading levels, and it is often difficult for parents to understand them. However, with a bit of searching, they can find exactly where their child stands.