![]() Years later no one could remember, but it’s fair to say he just made it up. But a detour was necessary since that level was just an offshoot or by-product of the instructional level.īetts thought students would improve their reading most from books they could already comprehend reasonably well. I’m not forgetting your question about the independent level. In other words, he did it wrong and it doesn’t work. The way Betts chose those criteria (the 95-98%) was nonsensical and more recent studies have shown that matching kids to books like that doesn’t provide learning advantages. That’s the scheme I learned early in my teaching career, and all these years later it is the scheme widely recommended by many reading authorities and programs. His conclusion was that kids would do best if placed in text they could read the words with 95-98% accuracy and with 75-89% comprehension. The trick, according to Betts, was to figure out which texts were in that sweet spot for a given student. And, if a book was especially hard then they might be discouraged or overwhelmed and that could undermine improvement, too. On the one hand, if students could read a book well already, there wouldn’t be much opportunity to improve with that. But what are the right books?īetts’ surmised that level of difficulty was the key. The theory of the instructional level is pretty simple and fairly attractive: put kids in the right books and they will learn more. ![]() The independent reading level was a side effect or unintentional consequence of this process. When teachers did differentiate, they tended to do this based on their own views of the matter (which likely ranged from thoughtful attention to the kids’ performance to any kind of bigotry one can imagine).īetts’ effort in this arena was notable both because it was empirical (science over opinion) and authoritative – he was a big shot in the reading field.īetts’ set out to determine an instructional level, and he did so, at least to his satisfaction. Others, who may have embraced differentiation, found the schemes to be onerous and unlikely (such as hiring a psychologist to test everybody’s IQ). Some resisted the idea of adapting instruction altogether. None of those schemes captured the hearts and minds of many teachers. ![]() ![]() The educational journals even offered recommendations on how put kids in the right books. The teacher’s editions of the 1920s usually recommended grouping to adapt reading instruction to varied abilities. If variations in text difficulty affected reading comprehension and speed, why not learning as well? The 1910-1920s had ushered in reading tests and readability formulas, which provided clear scientific evidence that both books and children varied in difficulty (books) and facility (kids). The idea of matching books to students’ learning needs had floated around for decades in the research community. But what about the independent reading level? Should we make sure that when children are reading on their own that they select books at their independent level or doesn’t that matter?īack in the 1940s, Emmet Betts was trying to figure out how to improve reading instruction. Teacher question: I know you criticize the instructional reading level.
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