Beyond Leveled Books, Second Edition

“In essence, Beyond Leveled Books is about empowering teachers. It’s about helping us understand that our job is more extensive and challenging than just moving children from level to level, faster and higher. It’s about knowing about books ourselves so that we can motivate our youngest readers, our struggling readers, and our doing-just-fine readers to find joy and pleasure in reading so they’ll choose to read even when they don’t have to.”

--From Beyond Leveled Books, Second Edition

Leveled books are an indispensable tool for teaching children to read, especially for emergent readers. But the authors of Beyond Leveled Books are sounding the alarm about the overuse and misuse of leveling and the way it restricts teacher autonomy and undermines student choice and reading engagement. Franki, Karen, and Lisa lay out a blueprint for using leveled books effectively within a student-centered and differentiated approach designed to motivate all readers, particularly transitional ones. 
 

• TEACHING TRANSITIONAL READERS: Beyond Leveled Books is packed with resources to help teachers understand and meet the needs of transitional readers, including examples of classroom instruction, sample mini-lessons, strategies for small-group instruction, assessment techniques, and articles by literacy experts. 
• RESOURCES FOR K-1 CLASSROOMS: The book explores the uses and limitations of leveled texts in primary reading instruction, including ideas for how to organize your classroom library and a list of great books and series to use alongside leveled text in supporting new readers.
• GATEWAY TO INDEPENDENT READING: The authors provide explicit tools for helping students consolidate their skills and reading strategies, to read widely and deeply, to increase their vocabulary, to build critical thinking, and to experience more joy from reading through deeper comprehension. 

This second edition of Beyond Leveled Books is an essential resource for K-5 teachers looking to help all readers, including emergent readers, struggling readers, transitional readers, and readers who have plateaued.