Text Leveling and “Little Books” in First-Grade Reading

In this study, we investigated the reliability of two current approaches for estimating text difficulty at the firstgrade level: the Scale for Text Accessibility and Support (STAS-1) and the Fountas/Pinnell system. We analyzed the performance of 105 first-grade students in texts leveled using these systems in the areas of rate, accuracy, and fluency. Students read these texts under three support conditions: sight reading, read-aloud (modeled), and previewed. The predictive validity of the two rating scales was supported by the performance data. Statistically significant effects were found for the various support conditions. Further, our analysis suggests potential benchmarks for first-grade performance: 95% accuracy; 80 words per minute; and a fluency rating of 3 (on a 1–5 scale).