Do Book Levels Have a Place in Classroom Libraries?

Here’s a question I get a lot–and it’s one that I’ve asked many times lately, too.  With the wholesale cancellation of anything to do with book levels, including in assessment, how do we help our students choose books that will support them as readers for independent reading?   After all, every classroom is full of kids with a huge range of reading ability.  Don’t we need leveled classroom libraries to help us help kids find books they want to and can read independently? In short, do book levels still have a place?

If we aren’t using levels, how do we know what even belongs in a classroom library?

There’s not a quick answer to this, and that’s why this post is much longer than usual. Why? Because on social media, you’ll often hear a resounding “no, absolutely not” as the end-all, be all answer.  

But there’s far more nuance to it than that. 

And I want to provide you with some actual direction.

To begin, here are some points taken directly from my own state’s K-5  text complexity support document which might well be pretty similar to what your state advises:

• Select developmentally appropriate and progressively complex texts to help students build stamina
• Differentiate for struggling readers by varying Qualitative and Reader/Task but keeping Lexile level the same or close to grade level expectation
• Support their reading growth through small group instruction that matches students’ instructional reading levels
• Teachers should develop a multilevel classroom library

Which begs some big questions: 

• What is developmentally appropriate? What does progressively complex look like by grade level? 
• What are “varying qualitative measures”? How does a teacher use them? And how would this be consistent among all teachers?
• Given the huge range of Lexile levels in a grade band, what is “grade level expectation?”  And how does that break down by quarter, since we would never expect a child to be proficient with “grade level texts” at the very beginning of the year?  
• Knowing increasing levels means increased content complexity (and significantly also raises the age-appropriateness level), how is it possible to “vary qualitative” measures but also simultaneously “keep the Lexile level the same?”
• How are students’ “instructional reading levels” determined? 
• What level range should be in a grade level classroom library? Should that be dictated by “varying qualitative measures?” Which ones?  How is that done?

And the biggest one: if we’re not supposed to include levels in our classroom libraries, then why are Lexile levels recommended??

A bit contradictory, no?

None of these questions are answered anywhere in my state support documents.  I even reached out to my state department for further clarification, but got very little.  The only additional insight was to assess fluency with norm-referenced grade-level texts.  A helpful and important measure for sure, but it is still of no help when trying to figure out what kind of books to include in the classroom library.

Book level considerations are complicated, for sure.  

One of the first places I always go to for clarification is Tim Shanahan. Shanahan is a big advocate for teaching kids using grade level, complex texts, and he has written extensively about it. In his updated 4/11/18 blog post,  he does just that.  He talks about this in terms of classroom instruction, not book selection for independent reading. 

In that same post, he also advises that teachers “pay attention to the Lexile levels that your state has established” for each grade level.  More confusingly,  in an earlier blog post where a 4th grade teacher asked for advice for choosing texts for kids who are 1-2 years behind, Shanahan said, “if students are reading like first-graders—that is, they are struggling with decoding then you definitely should be trying to teach them out of easier books, not grade level ones.” 

So, we’re back to the question: how does a teacher know what levels to include in a classroom library?

Let’s see what Lexile level guidelines might look like.  

In my state’s support document, a range of 210-400L is a “midrange complexity for K-1” and also a “low level complexity for 2-3 grade.” A text at “610-800L is mid level complexity for 2-3 grade and low level complexity for 4-5 grade.”

It’s interesting to note, isn’t it, that whether the direction to look to Lexile levels comes from an expert like Shanahan or from your own state guidelines, they are still suggesting that there is a place for book levels.  

But if you rely on Lexile levels, you must understand that it is simply a mathematical formula based on numbers:  number of words in a sentence, number of sentences, and number of times words appear.  That’s it.  Which is why, as stated in CCSS Appendix A, “Quantitative measures of text complexity, particularly those that rely exclusively or in large part on word- and sentence-level factors, tend to assign sophisticated works of literature excessively low scores. For example, some widely used quantitative measures, including the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test and the Lexile Framework for Reading, rate the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel Grapes of Wrath as appropriate for grades 2–3. This counterintuitive result emerges because works such as Grapes often express complex ideas in relatively commonplace language (familiar words and simple syntax), especially in the form of dialogue that mimics everyday speech.”

Serravallo points out more several more alarming examples of this, in Understanding Texts and Readers (2018, 24).  She notes that Trixie and the Halloween Fairy, a Rainbow Magic series book, is a Lexile 700–exactly what Stephen King’s The Running Man calculates to be. 

We can’t then pick up a “Lexile 500 book” and assume it’s great for our second graders. So again–what’s a teacher supposed to do??  How can we guide kids toward books that they can read independently that will also support them as readers–and that don’t rely on the teacher to support them all the way through, which is so often the case with complex, grade level texts, which Shanahan advocates for?

If Lexile levels are so unreliable, what’s a teacher to do?  What do we consider beyond the mathematical computation of words and sentences?

Told ya.  It’s complicated.

The Common Core State Standards, which most states all have their own version of, also uses the phrase “grade level texts.” In Appendix A, the guidelines urge teachers to consider three things to help teachers choose appropriate books to support kids. 

Beyond quantitative measures like Lexile, they also want teachers to think about reader and task as well as qualitative measures (which is exactly what my state’s standards say). So does Serravallo, in her book Understanding Texts and Readers (2018,17).   And it’s exactly what Fountas and Pinnell did years ago when they developed their letter leveling system and the Literacy Continuum (2007, 2010, 2018) that explained it all. They put all three of these considerations together as a guide for teachers to help them choose and provide books for kids so that teachers wouldn’t have to work so hard doing it all themselves. They even had a companion resource, Leveled Book List, which listed hundreds and hundreds of books with levels that teachers could purchase. More to the point, it showed what actual, real books looked like to help teachers curate their libraries. Love them or hate them, these ladies gave us quite a gift with these resources. 

Book leveling does have a place.  

The purpose remains what it’s always been: to help teachers select books that will support kids’ developing reading skills. Not to label or confine a child in any way.

“Levels were never meant to confine a child’s reading choices or life, they were meant to help them on their way. Much like we remove training wheels from a bike when a child is old enough, we must remove the levels as well. ”

Pernille Ripp

But how does a teacher know what books in a grade level range look like?  

How does a teacher know what books to include in their classroom library that would be most supportive of their wide range of readers?  

How do teachers begin to know what to provide?  

Let’s go ahead and address the use of decodables, because that’s going to come up right away.  These are for beginning readers.  This could mean primary grades and it could mean kids in upper grades who struggle.  They are just a scaffold, though, and should gradually diminish as kids become stronger readers.  They should never be the only type of text a child reads.  Shanahan spells this out in his updated 6/1/24 blog post, saying, “The text regime that significantly outdistanced the others in terms of how well they nurtured decoding ability was the diet that included decodables along with other texts.” He concludes that post with “I think it’s okay to use decodable texts as part of phonics instruction, but such practice should be limited, and even beginning readers should be reading (not just listening to) more than decodable texts.”  

The goal, of course, is to read well with confidence and independence with all texts.  Decodables are a means to that end, but absolutely not the end.    

And what about kids who don’t struggle to decode?  Kids who have already learned the code and are appropriately and increasingly accurate and fluent?  All too often, this large group of kids is left out of the conversation.  Blevins talks about this a lot (see Choosing and Using Decodable Texts, 2021), and Shanahan recently somewhat addresses this, too, in his 7/13/24 post.  In it, he encourages the use of text sets, book clubs, and “a range of difficulties” when choosing texts.  He still makes no mention of books that support independent reading, however; he only addresses guided reading and whole group lessons.  And again–what does an appropriate “range of difficulty” look like for a 3rd grader?  A 4th grader? 

Since so many of us are being told not to use Fountas and Pinnell book levels in any way, we’re still left with the question:  how do we help our students choose books that will support them as readers for independent reading?  

How do we set up our classroom library so it will support our readers?  And how do we do that without having to painstakingly–and subjectively–pore over all the hundreds of books we have, especially in the upper grades?

Well, if you’re a teacher who doesn’t believe kids should ever read independently in school, then you don’t even have to grapple with this–you can just brush it aside and continue to teach solely whole group and guided lessons with only complex “grade level” text (which has still not been defined as far as I’ve seen) and decodables. 

But if, like me, you believe in the importance of independent reading (which IS supported, not willy-nilly “drop everything and read” that people keep referencing–yet I haven’t seen since my own elementary years), then you need some actual guidance.  

Here’s what I’d do.  In certain Facebook groups, I’d be crucified for saying this because they believe in only giving kids decodable texts.  This is just not ok, nor, as I’ve pointed out, is it advised by the experts.  But I also don’t want Grapes of Wrath or The Running Man to end up in my 2nd grade library.  There needs to be some direction.  

Where’s the middle ground then?  What’s the place of book levels in a classroom library?

K and 1 classroom libraries

In kindergarten and early first grade, I’d have a whole lot of decodable books and passages, for sure.  Lots and lots of copies of them.  I’d give them to kids to read independently after having worked with them as a class and/or in small groups.  And then I’d let them choose from a wide variety of favorite picture books, familiar shared reading texts, and the like.  They could also listen to books–a mix of fiction and nonfiction, making sure to incorporate books on topics that are reinforced in the content areas.  The goal is to help kids enjoy books, and to begin to see the joy books can bring.  

Certainly plenty of kids will be ready for more than this, and that would be based heavily on a range of assessments. That’s when I’d begin introducing them to a band of levels.   

But…

I would 100% steer clear of level A-C books, as those are the predictable ones, and don’t support readers.  But if kids are ready for about a D/E, which are no longer patterned, it would mean, based on assessment, that they have a strong foundation of phonics and can read several lines of text with some degree of fluency.  Importantly, it would also mean they have been taught that reading is done through looking all the way through words, and not relying on pictures.    

After that window of time, they’re ready for so much more.  Again, decodables are just a means to an end, not the end.   So beginning at about mid-first grade and beyond, depending on the child, I’d still look to Lexile/guided reading level correlation charts, which have existed for decades, to help curate a strong and supportive classroom library.  I’d continue to group books together in not-at-all-obvious level bands, starting at about a D/E range to help support kids as they choose books that will support them and help them grow as readers.  

Kids need time in a wide variety of authentic texts to consolidate and continue to grow their skills: decoding, fluency, flexible strategy use, focus, and maintaining meaning. 

They need to learn to be flexible in applying their skills, because real reading in real books isn’t contrived, as decodables are.  This is what Share and Stanovich’s self-teaching hypothesis was all about.  For much more on this, I highly encourage you to listen to the Literacy View, episode 61 with Wiley Blevins, and to share it widely with colleagues.

In those K/1 book bins, I’d also include copies of shared texts we’ve read in class, a fluency passage or two, and perhaps an audio book. Again, I’d keep content studies in mind so that while honing their reading skills, they’re also gaining more background knowledge and growing their academic vocabulary.  Some of their time would be spent working independently, some with a partner. 

And to be very, very clear, I’d be conferring with kids every single day to really have a pulse on their progress as readers.

What would classroom libraries look like in the upper grades?

At the upper grade levels especially, context and content matter a lot.  I don’t, for instance, want my 4th graders reading about sensitive topics that are meant for high schoolers.  I also find it helpful to know, for example, at about the level range when symbolism becomes prominent, or when multiple perspective plot lines begin to emerge or when flashbacks show up, so I can guide my readers to watch for it and teach them how to understand it.  

That’s the kind of thought that Fountas and Pinnell did in coming up with their text complexity guidelines as spelled out in their Literacy Continuum almost two decades ago.  (Please take note, I’m only talking about text complexity here, which outside of levels A-C that I’ve already mentioned, has zero to do with MSV).  For these older readers, I’d also have them reread some of our shared texts from our content areas and our reading curriculum, and they would write about that reading at least once per week during the ELA block (and a lot more during content studies).  

So, yeah.  There is a place for book levels in the classroom.

There’s nothing wrong with level guidelines (guidelines, not hard and fast rules) for teachers in what to provide, beginning at about a level D/E.  I’ve always known, as Fountas and Pinnell have always said, that books are leveled, not children.  I also know that kids need a variety of texts for independent reading–texts within a comfortable level for the child, a mix of genres, some passages or texts meant for building fluency, and a text or two that we’re working with as a class but are still a bit challenging for them.  

And I’m going to lean on correlation charts in which very smart people have put in the enormous work of considering quantitative and qualitative measures so that I can put my time into doing the work of knowing my readers and then providing books that will support them the most, depending on the task at hand.

“Top runners don’t train at one level: They take long runs, fast but shorter runs, and also can lift weights to build specific muscles,” Shanahan tells D’Orio. “Kids should read a wide range of texts, and libraries can help. They should read easy books to things that kick their butts. The variation of difficulty does matter.” 

Tim Shanahan, Edutopia, 2020

And while they’re reading?  Just as with K/1, I’d be balancing 1:1 conferring with small group instruction.  Conferring with readers is absolutely crucial in supporting them as readers.  This allows me to listen to them read, assess their progress with multiple measures, and readjust the kinds of books kids are ready for. 

At the end of the day, assessments, level guidelines, the teacher, and the classroom library all work together, like co-teachers, to support the wide range of readers in a class.

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