Social Stories - Southern Early Childhood Association

In the spring of 2002, Presbyterian College and M.S. Bailey Elementary School in Clinton, South Carolina, received a
$1000 grant from the Southern Early Childhood Association’s (SECA) Division of Development to purchase three sets of
leveled texts for use in the 4K, 5K, and first- and second-grade classrooms. This article reports on some lessons learned.
Enhancing Literacy With Leveled Texts:
One School’s Experience
Anita McLeod and Kathryn Parmer
The role of leveled texts in teaching reading has
sparked a debate among early childhood teachers. Teachers
continue to look for the most effective methods for
teaching reading. Early childhood educators are committed
to using practices that are rooted in child-development-based
educational philosophy and research.
Concerns have been expressed about whether leveled
texts are simply a “fad” or an effective addition to a balanced
literacy program. A brief discussion of why leveled
texts were chosen for the M.S. Bailey Elementary School
sets the stage for understanding how they were used successfully
with children from ages 4 through grade 2.
Changes in Reading Instruction
The 20th century witnessed many changes in practices
in teaching reading in the United States. These
additions and changes eventually evolved into leveled
texts. Between the 1930s and the 1980s, the use of
preprimers and primers dominated the early reading
curriculum. The Dick and Jane books were commonly
used with this method. These texts were based on highfrequency
words and/or phonetically regular units. The
problem with these texts was that children were unable
to relate many of the concepts to their own lives
(Asselin, 2000).
Then in the late 1980s, the focus moved to literaturebased
materials that appealed to students’ interests.
These were often too difficult to effectively teach reading
(Asselin, 2000).
Publishing companies use different
leveling systems.
Characteristics of Leveled Texts
During the literature-based era, Clay (1972) began
to investigate how young children learned to read during
their first formal schooling. Her intervention strategies,
which incorporated “little books,” were field tested
in New Zealand and disseminated in other Englishspeaking
countries.
The “little books” were incorporated into the Reading
Recovery assessment and teaching strategy system (Clay,
1993) and teachers began to use them for instruction
and independent reading. The books were placed into
26 levels using these basic criteria:
• naturalness of text,
• close picture-text match, and
• predictability of text structure (Asselin, 2000).
Asselin (2000) noted that “since the little books were
introduced nearly two decades ago, the market has been
flooded with leveled books, and workshops abound on
different leveling systems” (p.2). Leveled texts have
come to mean any reading materials, including books,
that show a gradient of text from simple to more complex.
These texts are created to assist children with
their fluency and comprehension.
Matching books to young readers depends on teachers’
knowledge of the children, familiarity with the
reading materials, and an understanding of the reading
Anita McLeod, Ph.D., is an Early Childhood Consultant
and President-elect of the South Carolina Early Childhood
Association. She lives in Greenville.
Kathryn Parmer, B.S., is a kindergarten teacher at North
Douglas Elementary School, Douglasville, Georgia.
During the initial grant experience and at the time the article
was written, Dr. McLeod was Associate Professor of Education
and Early Childhood Coordinator, Presbyterian College,
Clinton, South Carolina. Kathryn Parmer was a senior
early childhood teacher candidate at Presbyterian College.
18 Volume 33, Number 2 DIMENSIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD Spring/Summer 2005