Need to Know How to Determine the Reading Level of Your Child? Use the 7 Quick Online Assessments Below!
Parent, are you curious or concerned about where you child stands with reading ability? You may be looking for a quick and easy way to assess what reading level your child is.
And - what exactly are reading levels? I'll attempt to summarize how many teachers and schools level children for reading.
I'd also like to encourage you to focus more on progress and to remember what your final goal is: A child who grows up to read fluently with great comprehension, and hopefully who has developed a great love of reading.
Meanwhile, reading progress at whatever rate is to be celebrated!
The seven reading factors below will include quick and easy assessments for reading readiness, phonics, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, sight words, and a bonus parent assessment to give you a little insight into how your little reader is doing.
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Instructions:
The assessments below are a very high-level brief overview of what you can look for in your child's reading. More information below the assessments are there to guide you as you decide what level books to focus on for your child.
As you go through these assessments, you may want to print out one of the printables below to keep track of your child's results.
First, print out the tracking form for your assessments here. Please note that there are also other forms in some of the assessments below to print.
Child reading level
After you work through some of these assessments on your child, you'll get a better idea of what books or concepts to work through. If your child is in the beginning stages of reading, do a lot of read-alouds to your child, and let your child "pretend" to read picture books and learn the feel and flow of book-reading.
When your child advances into simple phonics, choose books that feature words in the phonics families you are working on, and you can target books that matches about the same level of sight words that your child has mastered.
How to determine reading level of books
When you search for books that meet your child's level of reading, the books are usually labeled on the cover or inside as to what the reading level is.
You can use a chart similar to the one I'm picturing here, or you can use a book leveling app or online. (See the next section for book leveling sites and apps).

Free Book Leveling App
After you have figured out which approximate level your child is, and you want to pick out some of these books for your home library or school, there are great book leveling apps that will help you out! Here are a few sources for leveling books.
Scholastic.com app for book leveling
or, check out this Blog that gives a great list for leveling book resources.
Reading level test high school
Older students in middle, junior or high school may still take standard reading tests to determine gaps in reading, if there are struggles.
Many reading curriculum companie or reading product companies have tests that will match kids in the upper grades, such as the Star Reading Test, the Macmillan Readers Test, or A2ZHomeschool.
Guided reading level assessment
Guided reading level assessments are simply tests created by different groups to determine book reading levels for a student.
If you are a parent at home working with your child, you can look through the general assessments above to know at about what level books your reader might enjoy without struggle.
Teachers and reading specialists may use purchased or online guided reading assessments to determine how to work with a student.
More articles you may be interested in for your beginning reader..
How to Teach Reading Comprehension
How to Skyrocket Your Child's Reading Fluency
How to determine your child's reading level
Pulling together all of the information in this article and taking a look at th eassessments will help you get an idea of where your child is in reading and at what level.
Remember, this is just a tool for the parent / teacher to understand where emphasis needs to be placed in reading instruction. Definitely not a hill to die on, and a very high-level tool to give you a little insight into your young reader.
If you have a child who is struggling in reading, you may want to have an idea from these assessments where you think the struggles are, so that you can proceed with additional instruction in the home, or with your child's teacher, and if need be, seeking a reading specialist for a deeper look.
I know from experience that having a beginning reader (and especially a struggling reader!), can be daunting. But if you stop to enjoy the process, while taking the time to frequently read aloud to your child, you are going to find success, and joy in the journey.
Please let me know if the comments or via e-mail if you have questions or comments, and I'd love to hear if this works for you or is helpful to you.



More articles to check out!