The Five Finger Rule

I get a lot of children and parents who come in and have no idea where to start in terms of picking out a book that is appropriate for the child's reading level. (The fact that the child is in "second-grade" tells me nothing... there is a huge range of reading ability at this age and frankly at any age).

This is especially frequent among those who are perusing the "Easy Readers" section, a section of books that is devoted to introducing children to reading on their own.  They are arranged in a chapter book format, with large font sizes and pictures throughout the book so as to not be too daunting for the early reader.  They also range in difficulty level from levels one through four.  When a child needs help determining his or her reading level, I like to introduce the "Five Finger Rule", something I found to be quite useful during my time student-teaching in a school library.

Basically, you tell the child to open up to any page in the book.  Have the child begin reading that page.  For every word that the child needs help with, the child puts up a finger.  Zero to one fingers means this book is too easy.  The reader should challenge him/herself a little more.  Two to three fingers indicates a "just-right" book: the reader will be learning new words without the book being to overwhelming.  Four or more fingers shows that this book might be too challenging for independent reading, so the reader may need a reading buddy to help.  I created a poster to put near our easy readers that would hopefully help our patrons with this "rule", which is not necessarily a rule per-say, but rather an easy way of determining a general appropriate reading level for beginning readers.