Finding High Interest, High Ability Books
A Great Online Resource to Find Books for Gifted Readers
Sep 27, 2009
Gifted students and a love of reading usually goes hand in hand, but gifted education teachers know that every once in awhile, students who despise reading appear in the enrichment classroom. Finding books can be a challenge for those students, because they need books that have content that is high interest, have a reading level that is high abillity, and is written for the appropriate age level audience can be tricky. The Lexile Book Finder tool is a great way for all gifted readers to find books.
What is a Lexile Level?
The Lexile Reading Score is an analysis of the student's reading comprehension ability. This is determined through a standardized test. The Lexile Text Level is an analysis of a text's accessibility level; the Text Level Score can match readers to books. However, the Lexile Book Finder goes beyond levels by sorting the results by categories of interest, page count, and more.
Getting Started With the Lexile Book Finder
Using the Lexile Book Finder takes a bit of time, even if students know their reading range. Teachers should allow students at least 15 minutes to use the Book Finder. If students have state tests that use Lexile measurements, they will have a specific Lexile score to look up. Otherwise, the Lexile Book Finder has another option. Students can search by a combination of grade level and assessment of reading. Gifted students should mark the choice that "I find the books I read for school easy."
Using Categories to Search for Books
Once students have determined their Lexile level (which can be adjusted with the toolbar on the right side to raise it or expand the range, students can start choosing categories for books. There are many sub-categories within the genre choices, so kids can really find books that interest them. For example, a chid can choose the genre of Animals, and specifically choose books about horses,dogs, dinosaurs, and cats.
Refining Lexile Search Results
Once the list of books appear, the results can be overwhelming for students, particularly if they are not familiar with terms like "Non-Prose" Teachers can give the general instruction to ignore the "Limit by Lexile code" feature, as most students will not need to separate books in that sense. They can choose to find just "award winners" or just "non-fiction", and limiting the page numbers can help for students who are looking for a short book for a report or a long book to get through over the holiday break.
Using the Final Book List
The animal loving, gifted 4th grader who wanted a short award-winner came up with Mark Teague's Detective LaRue: Letters from the Investigation. It is about animals, is for 4th-8th grade reading level, it was nominated for the Colorado Children's Book Award, and it is 30 pages long.
Then the student needs to write down the books from the list, and search for the books in the library. Barnes and Noble now has Lexile reading levels with their books, so parents, who often want a resource to help gifted readers find books, can search BN.com for books and look by level.
The Lexile Book Finder is a great tool for gifted readers. Books can be found on interest level, at the appropriate age level (through the separation of "juvenile fiction" and regular "fiction"), and at a challenging reading level. The additional sorting tools give reluctant readers a chance at finding books they might like, and they give kids who feel like they've already read all the books in the library a chance to read something new.
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