Helping Your Child to Pick a Good-Fit Book

Hello Readers,

Now that many of us are back in school or school's right on the horizon, one of the catchiest phrases your kids will be hearing in school is "picking a good-fit" book. Teachers, rightly so, are really working with your children to help them find books that are appropriate for both their interest and difficulty level to read. All the research points to the fact that when students spend time reading good-fit books, they are able to vastly improve in their reading skills and advance to more difficult books in the future. Reading, however, cannot and should not stop at school. In fact, it's advised for our children to read at least 20 minutes every night (in addition to their homework) in order for them to increase in their reading skills and vocabulary knowledge.

To do this, as parents, we have to be able to not only put aside a time and place for our little ones to read each day, but also provide the materials they need. You don't have to be a Barnes and Nobles member, or an Amazon guru and buy all of your child's books! Quite the contrary, you needn't go further than your local library to find an astounding array of great-fit books for your kids.

Understandably, the library can be a dizzying place, and sometimes you may walk out wondering if your child really did pick the type of good-fit book that will help them improve in their reading. Well, that's why I, as the Reading Specialista, am here to give you some tips to make the process of picking a good-fit book for your child both fun and easy.

Motivation First

The first step to helping your child find a good-fit book is to ask them what they like and what they want to read about. Although we may think we  have the best ideas in mind for our children at all times (believe me, I'm super guilty of this one!), when it comes to picking what they want to read and what they're interested in, your kiddo will tell you! Whether they want to read about dinosaurs, fairies, police officers, dogs, cats, or roller coasters, find out what they like and you've got a great place to start. 

It's important for our children to be motivated when they read, so they will read the material more deeply, and will be more likely to finish what they're reading. It's vital to keep in mind that the reading they do, although it is important to be done nightly, it should be done for pleasure, and they should be allowed to read about a topic they want to read. So, once you've found out what your kid wants to read about, you can easily do a topic search in the library database.

5 Finger Rule

Step two, you checked the database, and pulled 10 books of various shapes and sizes for you child. You know some books look too hard and some look too easy, but you can't remember exactly which reading level your child's teacher suggested he had recently achieved. Well, there's a simple fix that teachers teach students in their classrooms that you can also do with your child. It's called the 5 Finger Rule. 

As detailed on the poster, you have your child open the book to a page, and start to read. Each time he misses a word, he puts up a finger. If he puts up 5 fingers or more on one page, that book may be a bit too hard for him to read successfully at this time, and you could gently council him to pick a different book. If, however, he only finds four or less words he has difficulty reading on the page, this could be a good fit book for him, and he can continue reading.

As an important note, sometimes this approach does not always weed out books that are too difficult for our children. In fact, it does tend to allow for our children to read books easier than is appropriate for their level. It's therefore important to have a conversation with your child to ask them if the book is "challenging" enough for them, but not too challenging, or if it's a bit too easy. By doing this, we are helping our children to monitor the difficulty of what they're reading and mature in their book choosing skills. 

Teacher Suggestion and Scholastic Book Wizard

Another great source of information on helping your child to pick a good fit book is your child's teacher and the website Scholastic Book Wizard. In the first couple months of school, your child's teacher will quickly become familiar with your child's growing reading level, and will most likely give an assessment or two to locate the approximate reading level of your child. It's important to note that these tests are not perfect and they only offer an approximate level, not an exact level, but it's a good place to start!

You can ask your child's teacher two questions to help you find good-fit books. 

1) You can ask the teacher "What is my child's reading level in your class right now?" (Many teachers have this information readily on file by the end of the second month of school, or would be able to give you an estimate if you politely ask them to observe your child over a week.) 

2) You could also ask your child's teacher for specific book suggestions. Many teachers have a wealth of knowledge of not only the interest levels of students in the age group that they teach, but also books they know your child would enjoy based on what they read in class.

With the information of your child's reading level, you can access Scholastic Book Wizard, which is one of my all-time FAVORITE TOOLS! I use this in my own work as I'm picking instructional books for small groups, or suggesting books for students.

Once you click on the Scholastic Book Wizard Link, you can search for books by title or level. If you search by title, the site will tell you the level a book is both for interest and reading level (as seen below).

If you search by level, Scholastic will suggest a list of books your child could read that would be on that reading level. You can search by grade level, guided reading level, DRA level, or Lexile level, all which are different types of ways to level books that your child's teacher might use (pictured below). 

It's always important to keep in mind, however, that motivation should always win out over level. I, for one, would never tell a child a book is too hard for him, but I would instead let him try to read it, and if he needed to abandon it, because he found it was too hard, that would be okay. I'd then be there to suggest another book, on his level, and it would be the student's choice if he wanted to read that one or not. So although the Scholastic Book Wizard allows you to be more exact and informed in your child's book choice, it's not the final say in what your child reads.

Those are just a few quick tips to help you make your time in the library with your child both enjoyable and fruitful! When you help your child pick a good fit book to read at home you are not only complementing the instruction that she is receiving at school, but you're also giving her the tools to strengthen her reading and become a lifelong reader!

So enjoy your weekend library trips and your smiling reading child, and...

Until next time...

Yours in Literacy,

The Reading Specialista