The little turtle can see the grass. The little turtle can see the trees. The little turtle can see the flowers.
These are the opening lines to one popular reading program’s leveled books: short, predictable texts designed for beginning readers. The patterned sentence structure—centered on the phrase “the little turtle can see"—invites students to rely on repetition and context clues to identify words they can’t sound out.
Leveled books have been a staple in early elementary reading instruction for more than two decades, with 61 percent of K-2 and special education teachers having said that they use them for small group work in a 2019 EdWeek Research Center survey.
But as the “science of reading” movement has spread, these texts have come under fire. Initially, they encourage students to guess at words rather than use their phonics skills, researchers say, which can prevent children from mapping the letter-sound connections that allow them to become fluent readers.
A second problem is how they sort students into levels. Studies have shown that leveling systems—the proprietary systems usually created by the books’ publishers which purport to match students with books that have a just-right alignment with their reading comprehension abilities—are frequently inaccurate.
For schools and teachers who have spent years building classroom libraries of leveled books, this shift can feel destabilizing. Do they need to toss hundreds of books in the dumpster? Or, even if these texts shouldn’t be used to teach beginning reading, can teachers use them in other ways?
In classrooms that are switching to a science of reading approach, educators are now wary of their leveled books, because of “the damage that they did,” said Wiley Blevins, an educational consultant and the author of several books on phonics instruction.
When children are still learning the code of written language, there needs to be a “tight connection” between the letter-sound correspondences they’re learning and the text they’re reading, so that they have opportunities to practice, he said. Leveled texts can’t do this job.
The text-difficulty levels also don’t offer much practical use, he said—they don’t tell educators what skills students still need to master, for example.
But that doesn’t mean kids can’t ever pick up these books, he said.
What are leveled texts?
In many of the most popular reading programs of the last decade, leveled readers were the some of the main texts that children worked with.
Teachers used the books for instruction, grouping students by their level and assigning them reading strategies to practice in the text. They have also been used for assessment. Teachers listened to students read these books aloud, keeping a running record of their errors.
Publishers claimed that the text-leveling system could match students with books that were “just right” for their abilities—challenging enough to help them practice new skills, but not so challenging as to be frustrating or inaccessible.
This idea is based on outdated theories about how children learn. Studies show students can read books that are above their level with teacher- and peer-provided support. Restricting students to text at lower reading levels can actually widen achievement gaps.
Other research has found that the leveling system isn’t even that accurate. A 2014 study showed that data from leveling assessments correctly predicted students’ reading ability only about 50 percent of the time.
The big problem with these books, though, is that they don’t help students develop their decoding skills—their ability to sound out words by connecting letters to spoken sounds, said Kari Kurto, the National Science of Reading Project director at The Reading League, a group that advocates for evidence-based reading policy and classroom practice.
Many of the words in these books aren’t written with constrained sound-spelling patterns, so “there’s no other strategy that a kid can use other than guessing,” Kurto said. In lessons with leveled text, students are often encouraged to predict what words might say based on sentence structure, story context, or picture clues, a method called three-cueing.
Some states have passed legislation or issued guidance that targets these texts specifically.
In Indiana, for example, the state department of education approved several early reading curricula with the stipulation that districts couldn’t use the leveled readers that came with the programs.
In addition to Indiana, nine other states have banned lessons that teach three-cueing.
At least one publisher, HMH, recently pulled a set of its leveled books. The set of materials was sold as a supplemental resource that could be used with Into Reading, a core English/language arts program that the company advertises as “science-backed instruction.”
Katie Marshall, a spokesperson for the company, said that the decision to “retire” the books was “based on the age of the product and business demand.”
How teachers can repurpose leveled readers
As some districts have shifted their reading instructional practice, they have moved from leveled to decodable text—books written to give students practice with the letter-sound correspondences that they are learning in phonics lessons.
But decodable books shouldn’t be the only books that students ever see, said Blevins.
At some point, students move on to more complex literature. In between—once students have mastered some of the code, but while they still need lots of practice reading fluently—leveled texts could play a role, he said.
Teachers shouldn’t worry about matching students with a particular level, he added, but rather see if they can find books that include some phonics patterns children know.
Many kids are ready to make this transition by the middle of 1st grade, though it varies from child to child, Blevins said.
Or, leveled readers could be used for other purposes in an English/language arts context beyond reading lessons.
The Right to Read, a group of educators and researchers that advocates for equitable literacy instruction, published a guide with suggestions for using leveled readers as writing prompts, grammar instruction, spelling practice, and examples of writing conventions.
Can leveled texts build background knowledge?
Some educators have repurposed leveled texts in a different way, using them to help students develop content knowledge about a subject. Research shows that students’ background knowledge is a key component of their reading comprehension ability.
And in general, having more books available that might tap into kids’ different interests is valuable, said Kurto, of The Reading League. “It’s great to have materials in the classroom that the kids who are automatic with the code can use,” she said.
Liz Schriver, a former intervention coach in Cabarrus County schools in North Carolina, took this approach. “We really don’t need to buy all new and abandon everything,” she told Education Week in 2022.
At the time, her district was implementing a new, evidence-based curriculum and accompanying instructional materials. Instead of ditching the old leveled texts, she worked with teachers to group the texts by subject area, rather than purported reading level.
Teachers could pull these books for lessons about rainforests or weather systems, for example, or students who were already fluent decoders could read them independently.
Still, Kurto cautioned that many leveled books are written with simple themes and basic vocabulary and syntax.
“A lot of the leveled texts are just a little fluffy. They’re about not very interesting stories,” she said. “If all [students are] getting beyond decodable text is leveled text, then it’s likely that they’re not being exposed to high-quality language and language structures.”
Other options would be better for whole-class instruction, she said.
“We want to have high expectations for our students, and we have very limited instructional time,” Kurto said. “What they’re reading in class really matters.”
