Reading Levels Reading levels are based on a system determined by Fountas and Pinnell in their book Guided Reading

Reading Levels

Reading levels are based on a system determined by Fountas and Pinnell in their book Guided Reading, Good First Teaching for all Children. Another system used in first grade is the Reading Recovery system of leveling, however, since we have students that read at a wide variety of levels in each grade, it is applicable to 2nd grade readers as well. The Fountas and Pinnell system is an alpha system (a-z) and the Reading Recovery system is a numeric one, but both are correlated to work together.

Correlation and Conversion Chart

No leveling system is an exact science, nor is any one assessment.

There are frequent discrepancies when the same book is looked at by different systems. The important reason for leveling books is to show a range of material at incremental levels of difficulty. Taken into consideration are length, print, layout, illustrations, content, themes, ideas, story structure and /or expository text features. Additionally, student interest and prior knowledge are factors to consider.

PM *Benchmark Assessment Kit*	*Fountas and Pinnell*	*Reading Recovery*	*DRA*
1	A	1	A - 1
2	B	2	2
3-4	C	3 - 4	3
5-6	D	5 - 6	4
7-8	E	7 - 8	6-8
9-10	F	9 - 10	10
11-12	G	11 - 12	12
13-14	H	13 - 14	14
15-16	I	15-17	16
17-18	J	18-19	18
19-20	K	20	20
21	L	The goal of Reading Recovery is to accelerate students to the middle of their class.	24
22	M		28
23	N		30
24	O		34
25	P		38
26	Q		40
27	R		40
28	S		44
29	T		44
30	U

Reading Recovery, DRA and Fountas and Pinnell levels were taken from the RCAS District Leveling Guide