I am in the process of leveling books for my grade one classroom, but I have a few questions... What do you do with the books that you can't find a level for? What do you do when you think a book is not leveled correctly?
Mark the inside somehow to let yourself know that you checked it and it didn't have a level - that way you don't find yourself looking up the same titles again and again! (from experience - I would hand parent volunteers a tub of books to look up, and realized in April how many titles we must be repeating!)
I have two libraries in my room; a leveled library, and a regular library. The books I can't find a level for, I place in the regular library. My regular library is sorted by genre, whereas my leveled library is sorted by level. I would just use my best judgement if I thought a book was not labeled correctly.
Have you checked the scholastic book wizard? You can type in title and it tell you the level. There's formulas where you count the number of words per sentence and number of sentences per page but I can think of the name right now. Something Readability. If you can get it down to a range take books you know look about the same level and compare font size number of words per page, difficulty of vocab... One teacher I knew would write a guess in the back cover in pencil or circle it so she knew it was her guess not the publishers.
I also split my library into leveled and then a different section for genres, authors, themes, etc. During reading they need to read from their just right bags, but at other times of the day they may read the non-leveled books.
Thanks for your replies. I have used the Scholastics Book Wizard, as well as another site, but I still have plenty of books that I can't find a level for. I like the idea of having just right bags for reading time and letting them look at the other books at other times. Another question, at what point in the year do you start just right bags? I teach first grade at a French immersion school, so they've never had any English instruction. It seems to me that I would have to wait a bit before starting these bags. Thoughts?
