Independent (“Just Right”) Reading Descriptions
Level C
Characteristics of Level C Books
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Simple, factual texts, animal fantasy and realistic fiction
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Picture books
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Amusing, one-dimensional characters
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Familiar, easy content
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Introduction of dialogue (assigned by said in most cases)
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Many sentences with prepositional phrases and adjectives
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Almost all vocabulary familiar to children – greater range of highfrequency words
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Some words with inflectional endings –s and -ing
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All concepts are supported by pictures
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Some simple contractions and possessives (words with apostrophes)
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Two to five lines of text on each page
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Some bolded words
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Punctuation other than periods: some ellipses, commas, quotation marks,
question marks, and exclamation marks
Characteristics of Readers at Level C
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Begin to move smoothly across the printed page when reading
Begin to use some expression when reading
Eyes are taking over the process of matching the spoken word to the
printed word (removal of finger tracking after this level)
Developing phrased reading
Noticing dialogue and punctuation and reflecting this with the voice
Developing a larger core of high-frequency words
Consistently monitoring reading and cross-checking one source of
information against another, self-correcting
Sample Texts
Level C
All-Star Examples: Some Brand New Readers, I Went Walking (Williams), Brown
Bear, Brown Bear (Martin), Boots (Schreiber)
REMEMBER: You can sometimes find titles at your level or check the level of a book you already have
on Scholastic’s Book Wizard site. Look for the initials GRL (meaning Guided Reading Level) – this is the
level we use at school. www.scholastic.com/bookwizard
Nancy Giansante is a librarian who keeps a nice leveled book list at her website:
http://home.comcast.net/~ngiansante/
This site is searchable by grade level suggestions, titles, and author names.