A Study of One Factor in the Grade Placement of Reading Materials

Abstract

The proper choice and placement of reading materials constitute an important and difficult problem in every school system. The successful teaching of reading depends to a great extent on the fitness of the selections for the grades in which they are to be read. The materials for any single grade should include selections of varying degrees of reading difficulty from the relatively simple to the more difficult in order that each child in the grade may find material adapted to his reading level. There is sufficient evidence to show that, so far as the individual child is concerned, the best training in reading cannot be given if the material to be read presents too many difficulties in comprehension. It is probably equally true that selections to be read by all individuals at a particular grade level should be relatively free from comprehension difficulties for the majority of the children in the grade. Uhl's investigation, in so far as it deals with the grade placement of reading materials, shows a relationship between ease of comprehension and pupils' interests in different selections.' In setting up certain principles with regard to teaching appreciation in the field of literature, Franklin T. Baker makes the following comment. Understanding is a first condition of appreciation. A poem in an unknown language might be music to our ears; but mere sound, however pleasing, is not literature. So we must choose for each period of the child's development what he can understand, not completely and finally--few of us understand to that degree-but well enough to feel at home in it. We do not try Bacon or Sir