Whether it is English learning or Chinese learning, the reader wins the world. In all English proficiency tests, reading accounts for the highest proportion.
With the popularization of English enlightenment, more and more children begin to read foreign graded books.
Because foreign countries have always attached great importance to the cultivation of children's reading ability, there are many kinds of graded reading materials. Parents in China are simply picky-A to Z, Oxford Reading Tree, I can read, Hyman and so on.
There are hundreds of graded books. Do you need to read it all? How can you have so much time? If you choose to study, how should you choose? How to determine the level of graded reading? How to find books suitable for children? ..... The problems that follow are also piling up.
Next, I will talk about our experience and lessons from my children's reading experience in these years, hoping to help everyone.
What is graded reading?
Provide children with reading plans according to their intellectual and psychological development levels at different ages. Scientific and targeted books should be provided at each stage to help children improve their English reading level to the maximum, just like letting children climb stairs step by step.
For example, if your child's current level is A, and then you choose graded reading with a difficulty coefficient of A+ 1, you will find that although it is a little higher than the child's current level, it will not affect the child's reading comprehension. He just needs to make some efforts to understand it.
When you meet a word you don't understand, you can also use pictures or guess the meaning together. In this way, on the one hand, it will not let the child give up because of the difficulty, and at the same time, it will not let him keep standing still.
The difficulty of reading is from simple to difficult, and it is divided into picture books, bridge books, first chapter books and chapter books. Their differences mainly focus on the difficulty of words, vocabulary and the proportion of pictures and texts. Gradually from pictures with a small amount of vocabulary to pure text reading. This process is not only accompanied by the improvement of children's English level and ability, but also conforms to the growth of psychological and cognitive level. Therefore, if you teach your child English, you'd better let him read the original work from the beginning, level by level.
As mentioned above, there are so many series of graded reading in the market that parents don't know which to start with at first.
Graded reading system appeared in western countries as early as 1920s, and it was not until 1930s that the exact grading standard was established. Now, the reason why you think there are many and miscellaneous systems is that different countries actually have their own graded reading systems and standards. Especially in Britain and America, there are several systems. No wonder we are confused by them.
Several popular graded reading systems in the market
System from beginning to end
Raz, which we are familiar with, uses this system. In alphabetical order, the difficulty increases from A to Z. There are cardboard books with exercise books and special apps. After reaching a certain level, there is a test question behind every story in the APP. This system was developed by two American reading experts.
Lexile classification
Formulated by the National Center for Child Health and Development, it has a history of nearly 40 years. This is a very scientific and objective measure. His evaluation criteria include two aspects: the test of readers' reading level and the measurement of text difficulty, which are carried out simultaneously. If A-Z is sorted alphabetically, the farther the letters are, the more difficult it is, so Lance sorts by fractions. The highest difficulty is 1700L, and one Lexile is a difficulty unit. One thousandth of the gap between reading a book that touches children and reading an encyclopedia is defined as 1 vocabulary.
Each reader's reading level has a corresponding score in the blue thinking system. If you borrow Lance's grading, you can find readers corresponding to your grades in his grading system after you know your grades. This is a book that combines your current reading level.
Lance Lexile belongs to one of the mainstream graded reading systems in the United States, and the following systems are parallel. Whether as a parent or a teacher, you can refer to multiple scoring systems at the same time to determine whether a book is read with children.
RL (equivalent level)
According to the American K 12 grade plus monthly mark, 5.3 is the third month of grade 5.
GRL (introduction)
Mark the difficulty with A-Z system, from kindergarten (A) to grade 6 (Z), corresponding to different letters.
LRX (lexilai)
Lance value, K 12, difficulty value between 25L- 1300L, corresponding to kindergarten to high school graduation.
DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment)
Mark the difficulty with numbers
Accelerated reader
It is also marked by grade and month and expressed by numbers. For example, 4.2 refers to the second month of the fourth grade in American primary schools, which is basically consistent with the RL system.
From the above table, you will find that these systems can actually correspond to each other. Although RL and AR are produced by two different companies, they are basically the same because of their similar difficulty marking methods.
How to use the scoring system?
There are so many systems, but I usually look at two values: Lance and AR. For example, we are watching Knight the Great and Pillow Cover.
In the AR system, his difficulty value is 2.5LG, which means that students in the fifth month of Grade 2 can read.
I found that his blue value is 490L, which is almost within my child's ability. As for A-Z, I didn't use his difficulty system when choosing books, but directly bought books rated by RAZ. Let the children climb on top of each other.
How do you know your child's reading level?
This used to be a problem that bothered me for a long time. How difficult is this book? I just need to find useful tools in the library or directly search the scoring website to find them. But what difficulty should children read?
On the one hand, I used RAZ to let my child learn English from the beginning, and let him follow letter after letter and story after story. At the same time, I am also trying to get my children to do some international English proficiency and ability tests, such as the AR mentioned just now. Now many oral English organizations have launched free tests for children.
The first measured AR value is 1.9, which is the level of 9 months 1 in American primary schools. Then with the value of the child, I can easily find a book suitable for his difficulty.
If you can keep reading for at least 30 minutes every day, you can generally test it once every six months. If your child's reading level improves, you need to choose a new book. After the first test, we tested it again four months later. Although it's only four months, my reading ability has obviously improved to 3.0 because of a lot of reading at home.
There is also a record of each test in the system. Comparing the latest test with the last test, we can see where the child is improving.
At the same time, the system also summarizes the child's current weaknesses and subsequent reading suggestions according to the child's test. I think I have become more calm in my children's reading since I used the AR test.
Of course, there must be many exam grade schemes and exam systems that I don't know or understand. You can also choose according to your own situation. The purpose is to accurately find the child's ability level, and then find the books corresponding to the child's level under the same system.
The graded reading textbooks we have seen are for your reference.
As mentioned above, there are many textbooks for graded reading, and it is obviously impossible to follow them all. Then you can choose according to your child's interests.
I can read the picture book series.
This is a very popular set of books abroad, which has been selling well for decades. Parents and children read picture books together, full of affection and warmth. The whole series has many themes that are deeply loved by children, and the images are particularly cute and the colors are very bright, which is very suitable for beginners to read.
For example, cookie dog, little hairy monster, confused maid, Arthur, etc., all of which were completed by my son. The whole series is divided into very first, my first and 1-4 grades. Among them, my first one is mainly read by parents to their children; The difficulty of 1 level is generally a few words and one or two short sentences; Level 2, children can read some, but they still need the help of adults; Children can read independently from level 3.
Oxford reading tree
The research and development of Oxford University is a completely independent system. Including novels (stories) and non-fiction (social science, natural science), as an independent grading system, like the above-mentioned major systems in the United States, it also corresponds to children of different degrees.
It is divided into 16 stages. The series from 1 to 1 1 is called a reading tree. Basically, after reading the first article 1 1, you can read story books, newspapers and poems at the same level smoothly.
But because the Oxford system is so huge, it is difficult to buy the original in China. Forgive me for being an original bookkeeper, so we just gave up after reading Level3.
Reading A-Z
This is what we have been using. I chose this series because it contains not only books, but also the main contents of the course, knowledge points, including natural spelling, high-frequency vocabulary, seeing words and other knowledge points, as well as questions designed for these.
Every letter of RAZ contains many books, including 100. In addition, every article has test questions (no AA level), so the progress is not so fast. We read two books on average every day, and now we have finished reading the letter "I".
Heineman Hyman
Hyman, we have finished reading GK(70 books) and G 1( 1 10 books). Many photos in this graded reader are real people, not animated plots and virtual characters, so it is less interesting and our spare time is not so rich. So let the children continue to listen to the rest. In terms of difficulty, I feel that Hyman is the least difficult of these sets.
abstract
Although there are so many systems, I think we just need to choose a set of graded reading and follow it all the time. There is no need to read at the same time. For one thing, there is not so much time; for another, it is unnecessary. Of course, like us, you can mainly follow one set, and others can read selectively, pick topics that children are interested in, or serve as listening materials for children's English. Although I don't watch it, it is helpful to listen to it. No matter reading or listening, it is input. If you insist on input, you can output smoothly when you reach a certain amount.
English graded reading materials are rich in topics, including stories and virtual topics, but most of them are closely related to life.
—— Transfer from OK Wonderful Baby Xiaoyue Month Arrangement—