Deciphering Reading Levels

Susie Menk, Youth Librarian at the Manitowoc (WI) Public Library will be writing a monthly blog post. Here is her first one! It's all about figuring out how to help families searching for specific reading levels for their readers.

We all have them—small collections within a collection.  Well, then again, maybe we don’t.  I work at a medium sized library in the Children’s department. We often get complaints about all the different collections in the youth department.  BUT what people don’t realize is that there are so many levels of reading for children.  I can’t tell you how many times we get adults in asking for a particular level of reading for their child.  Children are reading at a “K” level or an “O” level and they want more books on that level.  So what do you do?  Books aren’t published with reading levels listed on the cover, so how do we help our patrons? 

Most of the schools in my area tend to use the “F&P” reading levels.  That is short for Fountas & Pinnell and is a reading level based on the 26 letters of the alphabet.  Reading levels are grouped by grade level.  What we have been finding is that in the easy readers or early chapter books, there are some publishers that will put an F&P level on the book, but most don’t.  So what to do?  Where to go? HELP!!!!

Have no fear, there are some tricks you can use to help you figure out reading levels.  First there is a website by Scholastic called Book Wizard.  This site allows you to put in a title and if they have it in their records you might be able to locate a grade level or F&P level.  Another handy tool is to check the back cover—there are some publishers who are now putting F&P Guided Reading Levels on the back covers of their books.  Not all, but some so that is helpful.  Our library has started finding and then writing in the F&P level inside the front cover of our easy reader books.  We don’t always find one, so some books have N/A instead of a reading level.  This marking of the reading level helps both us and our patrons. 

The last tool that I would suggest is a conversion chart that I found a few years back.  This tool has been a lifesaver for me time and time again.  I use it to find the F&P level or for older chapter readers, a comparable lexile level.    It’s a lexile conversion chart .  This chart also comes in handy since it has Accelerated Reader levels as well as other formats for reading levels.  

If you have any other handy tools that you love to use, please share them below!