Brag Time: Reading Levels

This summer I was reading the chapter books that Primus has chosen to study this year for literature and started to get worried that one was going to be too difficult for her.  According to Scholastic Book Wizard, it's rated as a 6.9 reading level.  She's only entering the 5th grade this year. 

So I figured it was about time that I tested all the kids so I could have a more accurate view of their reading ability.  Our charter school tests them twice a year on several Language Arts and Math skills, but for various reasons, I always take those results with a grain of salt.

The first test I administered was the SORT (Slosson Oral Reading Test).  It's several leveled vocab word lists and you count up how many the student can read correctly.  It's important to note that this test does not care whether the student understands what the word means or if they can use it correctly in a sentence.  It's only assessing if the student can read the word out loud properly.  

According to the SORT, Primus (going into 5th) is at a 7.4 grade level, Secundus (going into 3rd) is a 4.8 grade level, and Tertius (going into 1st) is a 2.1 grade level.  


Next, I wanted to test the kids' oral reading speed.  I used the leveled reading passages and scoring method found in Evan Moor's Building Fluency books (I have free access to all of them because of my membership with their Teacher File Box site.)  There's also an explanation on how to test using any reading passage here.

Again, this assessment did not test for comprehension, only reading speed and accuracy.

Primus: Using the 5th grade passage, she read 168 words per minute, 90th percentile. 
Using the 6th grade passage, she read 150 words per minute, 75th percentile.  
Using the 7th grade passage, she read 141 words per minute, 60th percentile.

Secundus: Using the 3rd grade passage, she read 129 words per minute, 90th percentile. 
Using the 5th grade passage, she read 127 words per minute, 65th percentile.

Tertius: Using the 1st grade passage, he read 70 words per minute. No percentile is assigned for 1st graders at the beginning of the year because it's not supposed to be administered until later.  However, this word speed is equivalent to 85th percentile for a mid-year 1st grader.
Using the 2nd grade passage, he read 56 words per minute, 55th percentile.


In summation, all three kids are 1-2 grade levels above where they "should" be. One proud homeschooling Mama over here! It's always nice to see that I'm not screwing up my kids! Yay! lol ;)