Choosing Books

Choosing a book is fun and important! It is important to think about:

Readability: The Five Finger Rule - We remind students that a book needs to be readable for them to understand and enjoy it. That means choosing the right difficulty of text for a particular child at a particular time in their development. After self-selecting a book, we ask each child to open it up and begin reading. If they come to a word that is unfamiliar or tricky, we teach them to hold up 1 finger. Below are some guidelines to help determine the readability of a book. It is called the 5 Finger Rule.

Easy books- A child can read every word and understand every idea. If a child can read an entire page with 1 or 0 fingers than it is an easy book, and may not be challenging enough.

Just Right books - A child can read most of the words, but not all of them, and they can understand most of the ideas. If a child can read an entire page with 2-3 fingers up, then it is a just right book. This is the ideal text difficulty for most readers.

Challenging Books - ideas are not understood. Meaning breaks down. If a child reads an entire page with 4-5 fingers up, then it is too challenging. This text should be saved until a bit later in a child's literacy journey.

Purpose- Why did you select the book you did? Is it to complete school assignments? Find out more information about a topic? Be entertained? Cook something or learn how to do something new?

Interest-Interest is central to book choice for readers of every age. Text that addresses a reader's interest promotes engaged reading. For personal reading, we primarily choose books based on our interests. We can't expect kids to be any different! What does your child like? Sports, music, art, animals, humor, etc.

Choosing a new book?   Try some of these!

• Look at the pictures
• Read the front flap
• Read the back cover
• Look at the cover
• Read the first page
• Look at the author
• Read the first few pages
• Read the table of contents
• Look to see if it is a series
• Read the title
• Look at the genre (mystery, fable, humor)
• Look at the length
• Recommendations from others
• Look at the level
• Read the last page
• Flip through the pages
• Size of print
• Number of words on a page
• Pictures to support text
• Word difficulty
• Predictable text