Let’s say you’re in fifth grade. You’ve already read all the Harry Potter books three times (okay, you’ve read the first one seven times). You know the entire Percy Jackson series by heart. Your start-of-year reading assessment vaulted you comfortably from level Z to level Z+ on the Fountas and Pinnell reading scale, so you’re now clocking in at a high school reading level, and you keep hearing that you need to read more advanced books. Your older sister (who’s also a Z+ reader) and all her friends are raving about a new young-adult masterpiece that’s won all kinds of awards, but the characters are juniors in high school and they do stuff at a party in the very first chapter that makes you want to drop the book and go straight back to Harry Potter. Where do you turn?
This is a challenge we encounter all the time. At Long-View, 78% of our learners are reading at the Z+ level; this indicates a high school level in terms of both literal and inferential comprehension….
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