Teachers often have a specific theme or content they want to cover, but have a wide range of reading levels in their classroom. One way to handle that situation is to have many books on that one theme, but the books are written at different reading levels. These are often called text sets. I wrote here about a text set on persistence. ReadWriteThink has some good guidelines for creating text sets .

Lit for Kids calls text sets Book Flights , and they’ve gathered book flights for various topics, including Ancient Egypt, Cinderella, the beach, teachers, and more. Book Flights include read aloud suggestions, and books that range from toddler/early reader levels to tweens to young adult. Lit for Kids has also created also book pairings, where one they recommend one adult book and one kid book about the same topic, or by the same author.

Booklist Online offers something similar, although with less of a range of reading levels. They call them read-alikes, and offer one theme with a range of books on that theme. The Green Thumbs one might be fun for spring, or in this election year maybe your students would enjoy Pint-Size Presidents. (You’ll have to search the site to find the actual lists.)

Do you use any other resources for developing your text sets? If so, please let me know!

About the Author

Joanne Meier has more than 20 years of experience in the field of education, including serving on the faculty at the University of Virginia for six years where she trained reading specialists and future classroom teachers. Dr. Meier was Reading Rockets’ research-to-practice consultant from 2002 to 2014, where she wrote the Page by Page blog — sharing best practices in supporting young readers at home and in the classroom.

Publication Date
January 19, 2012

Related Topics

Children’s Books, Classroom Management, Comprehension
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