New Fountas and Pinnell Guided Reading Levels for Kindergarten

It's wonderful to be able to guest blog for Ashley as she makes her journey across the U.S.. My name is Arlene Sandberg and you can find it at LMN Tree  My husband was in the military for 30 years so I understand what it's like to back up and move so often. Although I'm retired now, I have taught for more than 33 years all over the U.S. including Alaska and Hawaii and overseas in Seoul, South Korea. My last 9 years I was an ESL teacher/specialist with the Anchorage School District working in Title I schools.                                          

I love writing Guided Reading books for my thematic units and include Word Work Activities for Literacy Centers as well as Picture/Word Word Walls and Writing Activities.Pictures are a great help to ESL students and those who don't have a rich and robust vocabulary.  I love Reading A-Z and have downloaded lots of books for my students and my grandson to read. When I write my own books I have used the reading level chart which for Kindergarten is aa-C.

So I was surprised to see this new chart on Scholastic that has the Kindergarten range from A-D.

This is definitely a result of the new Common Core Standards that have been adopted by 45 states.

The first thing I noticed was how the number of words increased from Level C to Level D. There were also more difficult words. For many Kindergarten teachers who teach in Title I schools this will be very challenging.  

I would love to know what level your Kindergartens are suppose to be reading at by the end of year. I also am including a free Guided Reading and Writing Unit I have written for you to download. After looking at the Make and Take Book please tell me if the Kindergartners at your school could read this at the end of the school year? Just click on the picture below to get your free copy. Hopefully your first grade students will have fun reading it too.

I hope that if you like my products you will check out my TpT store and follow me in order to get updates on new products that I will be adding. There are some great new BTS items for you to check out. Thank you for all you do to make a difference for your students.

What do you think about the new Reading levels or Kindergarten?