D5: Leveling Books

I did a recent post on leveled books and my “Just Right” library. Check out that post by clicking here or on the picture of the library. I thought I would share how I level the books.

1. First, I accumulated a pretty big collection of books through library sales, yard sales, thrift shops, and looking through teacher cast offs. Don’t worry if you don’t have a lot of books, just keep on the look out and collect as you go.

2. I put those round garage sale stickers on the top left corner of every book, where I write the level. The students know that any book with a sticker is from the “Just Right” library and needs to go back in the matching container.

3. I used my parent volunteers to put levels on the books using a few resource websites. When I can’t find a level, I look for books with similar characteristics (vocabulary, number of lines of type, level of picture support, and so on)

4. I periodically have the students go through the baskets and reorganize as needed.

This system have been pretty easy to maintain. Sometimes I have to reteach students how to put the books back.

Here are the websites I use for leveling:

• Scholastic’s Book Wizard - I often share this link with parents so they can choose books at a good level for their little one.

http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/homePage.do

• Beaverton School District's Leveled Books Database - This site has more books by school-based publishing companies.

https://leveledbooks.beaverton.k12.or.us/

• Leveled Book Lists - This site is more list based, organized by grade, title, and author.

http://home.comcast.net/~ngiansante/

Happy leveling!