Reading Comprehension Leveled Books Guide About Leveled Books Imagine Learning’s Leveled Books provide literary and informational texts in a variety of genres at each reading level. Leveled books include narratives, myths, and plays, as well as biographies and informational texts that teach content from math, science, and social studies. Selections are paired: one text provides background knowledge for the other. Reading levels are determined by Lexile measures, and books are grouped into grades based on target Lexile measurements for each grade. The Leveled Book resources that support reading comprehension are: • Leveled Book Texts and Comprehension Questions • Graphic Organizers • Reading Response Journals Leveled Book Texts and Comprehension Questions Resource Overview Leveled Book Texts are printouts of the book cover and text. Each printout includes information for a thematically paired Leveled Book, Lexile measurement, and word count. Each Leveled Book text also includes an Oral Reading Fluency assessment box to evaluate students’ oral reading ability. Comprehension Question types for leveled books include literal, inferential, vocabulary, main idea, story map, author’s purpose, intertextual, cause/effect, compare/contrast, and problem/solution. Each Comprehension Question sheet also includes vocabulary and glossary words used in the books. Answers to questions are located in the Leveled Books Answer Key. How to Use This Resource in the Classroom Whole class or small group reading • Conduct a shared reading experience, inviting individual students to read segments of the story aloud. • After reading a selection together, call on volunteers to connect the story to a personal experience, comment on his or her favorite part, or share what he or she has learned from the reading. Partner Reading • Select from (or allow students to select from) the following options to read aloud in pairs. • Choral Reading: Have students sit together and read the text aloud together. • Echo Reading: Have one partner read a line and have the other partner repeat the line. Alternate roles with each new paragraph. • Taking Turns: Have students take turns reading a sentence or paragraph at a time. • Silent Reading: Have partners read silently, sitting near one another so that they can ask each other for help when needed. • Part Reading: Have one partner read any narration, or any parts that aren’t dialogue. Have the other partner read the characters’ parts, using different voices for each character. • Partner Work: Allow students to read the same book and then together work on Comprehension Questions, Graphic Organizers, or Reading Response Journals, or other extension projects that correlate to the story. • Read and Tell: Select a section of text and have both partners read silently, signaling each other when they are finished. Then have partners turn their printout face down and designate one partner as listener and the other as teller. The teller retells as much of the reading as possible. When the teller has finished, the listener may add any additional information he or she remembers. Then both partners turn over the text and skim the selection for ideas or facts that they may have missed. Select a new section and have partners swap roles and repeat the process. Oral Reading • Use the Oral Reading Fluency assessment box at the bottom of each leveled text printout to evaluate a student’s oral reading ability. Listen to a student read the story, count the student’s reading errors, and then use the formulas displayed in the box at the bottom of the page. Formulas are based on counting errors Leveled Books Guide Copyright © Imagine Learning, Inc. Reading Comprehension Leveled Books Guide that change grammar or distort meaning. Self corrections and mispronunciations of names are not counted as errors. Mistakes that should be counted as errors are: Substitutions: Student replaces the word in the text with another word that doesn’t mean the same thing (nonword substitutions are always counted as errors each time they are said). Omissions: Student leaves out a word in the text. Insertions: Student adds an extra word to the text. In the example box below, taken from the article Falling Rocks of Ice, if students make four or fewer errors, they are reading at an independent level. Students can make as many as eleven errors and still read at an instructional level. More than twelve errors indicates a frustration level. Graphic Organizers Resource Overview Graphic organizers help students understand what they read by chunking information visually and showing relationships between ideas. Leveled Books include organizers that focus on crucial comprehension skills, such as main idea and supporting details, sequence of events, cause and effect, compare and contrast, story map, and more . Each organizer includes instructions and content specific to the leveled text it accompanies. How to Use This Resource in the Classroom • Have students follow the instructions on the printout, either independently or with a partner. After students complete the graphic organizer, evaluate their word or have partners compare and self-evaluate. • Have a student put the Leveled Book printout and graphic organizer side by side. Work with the student to look for the clue words on the graphic organizer and highlight them in the Leveled Book. Have the student fill in the rest of the graphic organizer by searching for the words in the text that support the clue words. • Model how to turn the information from the graphic organizer into sentences and how to order the sentences into a summary. Have students then do the same independently. For an extension, have the student add one specific detail after each summary sentence. Reading Response Journals Resource Overview Reading Response Journals help students show comprehension by connecting the story to personal experiences or ideas. Each journal page includes two writing prompts. How to Use This Resource in the Classroom • Have students choose one of the prompts to answer in a written paragraph with complete sentences. Encourage students to use words from the Words You Might Use section for language support. • Clarify difficult vocabulary, provide helpful ideas, or model the activity to ensure comprehension. If there are issues with the student’s response, such as lack of details, or not using key vocabulary, do one of the following: • Help the student brainstorm how the story connects to his or her everyday life. • Help the student identify additional vocabulary that could enrich the writing piece. • Extend the reading experience by having the student prepare for an imaginary interview with the main character of the story. Have the student write five questions he or she would like to ask. Have the student pair with another student to role play the interview. Have the students use the reading response journal to record their partner’s responses. • Have the students create an event to add to the beginning or the end of the story. Have the students write about the new events in detail in the Response Journal. Leveled Books Guide Copyright © Imagine Learning, Inc. Reading Comprehension Reading Comprehension Associated Press Articles Guide Resource Overview Associated Press (AP) articles are authentic, nonfiction news articles in the grade-level Lexile band. Each article pairs thematically with a related Leveled Book. These relevant and engaging news articles help students learn new vocabulary, improve literacy skills, and increase their knowledge of the world. Article topics include historical, scientific, and technical issues and address real-world problems and questions. Students can analyze the arguments presented, discuss their own opinions, and support arguments using evidence from the text. The AP articles and the accompanying Comprehension Questions provide material for whole-class or small-group academic discussions, collaborative research, and individual writing topics. Comprehension Questions focus on helping students learn nonfiction vocabulary and concepts, identify main ideas and supporting details, cite text evidence to support claims, and understand the sequence of events. See the Associated Press Articles Answer Key for the correct answers. How to Use This Resource in the Classroom • Match the Headings: Select a number of articles and separate the headings from the articles. Display the headings or place them in a central location. Provide students with the articles and ask them to match each one to a headline. Have students point out the words in the headline that helped them to match it to the correct story. • Word Hunt: Have students use the news article to go on a word hunt. Have students work in pairs or teams to hunt for any of the following: • Recent vocabulary or spelling words • Parts of speech students are learning: adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc. • New/unknown words (have students look up definitions in the dictionary) • Five Words: Give each student (or pair of students) a different news article. Ask students to choose five interesting words from the article and use them to write original sentences or a short paragraph. Display or write the headlines from the selected articles on the board. Have each student read their original sentences or paragraph. Have the other students in the class listen and use the headlines to try to determine the article that the words came from. • KWL Chart: Use a KWL chart (what I Know, what I Want to know, what I have Learned) to activate students’ prior knowledge of the topic and engage their interest as they read. Before distributing the article, read the headline aloud and ask students what they know about this topic. For example, if the article is about volcanoes, students can write anything they already know about volcanoes in the K column. Have students discuss what they know with a partner or small group. Read the headline again and ask the students what they think they might learn about volcanoes from the article. Then have students write what they want to know about the topic in the W column.