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I am having a hard time rapping my head around assigning by pages for DITHOR especially, but also for storytime. I am wondering what a good avg number of pages is for a 4th grader- I think I am going to start her in DITHOR level 3 (we haven't worked on read aloud at all since she was just beginning reading- though she reads aloud to her siblings all the time, we have never worked on any genre identification/classification....) When she likes a book, she can read an entire magic tree house book in 1 sitting- those are about a level 2.5- maybe 60 pages I think? She started reading a The Princess Diaries book- they are more like level 5.1 I think- and she read a good many pages....

Should I base how many pages on what reading level the book is on? It seems to me, she should be reading approximately the same or more pages each day is this accurate? (the books we have chosen some are shorter, some are longer, so I feel I have to 'add' to the shorter ones so she is reading the same amount or close each day?)

Is it ok to have a 'range' of reading material- like what we selected for DITHOR ranges from the lowest 2.8 to the highest is a 4.7-- but most of the books I think fall between say 3.5-4.5 for the most part. Is this ok?

For storytime, do you make sure you pick all books that are about the same length so storytime is about the same amount of time each day? I think I chose mostly books suggested by HOD, but I still seem to have some real short ones, and some long ones.

Thanks
Brenda

simplepamom wrote:
Should I base how many pages on what reading level the book is on? It seems to me, she should be reading approximately the same or more pages each day is this accurate? (the books we have chosen some are shorter, some are longer, so I feel I have to 'add' to the shorter ones so she is reading the same amount or close each day?)

Is it ok to have a 'range' of reading material- like what we selected for DITHOR ranges from the lowest 2.8 to the highest is a 4.7-- but most of the books I think fall between say 3.5-4.5 for the most part. Is this ok?

For storytime, do you make sure you pick all books that are about the same length so storytime is about the same amount of time each day? I think I chose mostly books suggested by HOD, but I still seem to have some real short ones, and some long ones.

Thanks
Brenda

Good morning, Brenda! The number of pages really do vary depending on the length of the books. For fourth grade, we will probably read anywhere from approximately 10-20 pages a day. We enjoyed this variety last year. I think you hit the nail on the head with your question about the "range" of reading material. We've really loved using a range of material. I always think of it like this - when I am reading, I sometimes choose college or higher level reading material and thoroughly enjoy it, and other times, I read eighth grade level books (i.e the newspaper and magazines average around an eighth grade reading level). I enjoy this too, and the variety is good. Our dc are this way as well. They probably would not enjoy always reading at their peak reading level, nor would it be good for everything they are reading to be very easy for them. So, the range is a good thing - we've found the same applies to Storytime. We did 1 title for Storytime always, and just divided it by the number of days we read it. HTH!

In Christ,
Julie