Elementary school librarian here. I read, but I don’t read books that often. I’ve rarely read a novel by choice, and when I do I usually can’t wait for it to end by the time I’m halfway through it. However, I can research various topics all day (and often do). Obviously she’s picked up good reading comprehension skills, and she’s proof one can do it without sitting down and reading books all the way through.
Educator here.
Sounds like you’ve got a helluva kid. Keep her engaged, keep her motivated, and keep on praising her for being so smart. 
Thanks. She is a helluva kid.
I am quite bright, can read most anything short of intricately technical works wherein I would need to look up every tenth word, destroying any train of thought.
How many books have I read in the last 30 years?
Zero
Including assigned texts in school(s), lifetime? About -10 - I didn’t even read the required texts.
For many years, I carted around a copy of “Beyond Good and Evil” (the one by Nietzsche), which I was determined to read eventually (it was assigned for an undergrad class, ca 1970).
About age 50, I threw it out - unread.
Don’t worry about the kid - she can do just fine without a compelling need to read.
p.s. - I also pegged the IQ test (top end). No correlation between intelligence and number of books read.
My son read all those before grade 5, but his reading was judged to be that of a year 9 in grade 6.
Maybe different grading is used downunder?
Well ‘age’ is a poor way to describe the test result.
Understanding emotion and other language nuances is poorly connected with age. Its the sort of thing they do at 12 or they don’t ever do.
There is also the comprehension piece - it isn’t just “can he read it” but "can he read it fast enough and retain details (so he doesn’t need to waste time looking) to answer “what was the weather like when Billy went to the store.”
A kid who reads for big themes and skips details - or a kid who doesn’t give a crap about filling in little circles - doesn’t do as well as a kid who either reads and retains details, or can skim to grab details from the text. Its simply a construct of how they measure.
I did well on these in school, and lousy now because now when I read, I skim for big ideas.
No, praise her for working hard. All sorts of articles in the past few years warning of the difference. Doesn’t matter how smart you are, you need to work hard to find your intrinsic motivation, which will take you far.
When I was in third or fourth grade, I took a reading comprehension test that pegged me as “PHS” which meant “post-highschool”. I’m still dubious about that score. I didn’t read many novels recreationally, and I highly doubt I could have taken a stab at even cleaned up Chaucer. I did start reading really early, but I attest most of my high reading test scores to me odd vocabulary far more than anything else. Fantasy, sci-fi, and historical video games teach you lots of really unique words. Especially back in the days where manuals were half the size of phonebooks. I mean, how many people not involved with archery know what arrow fletchings are?
I mean, I was certainly more advanced than my peers. Whenever we had reading hour in 1st grade they always had to bring books from the 5th grade classrooms for me because otherwise I’d get bored or just burn through the book too fast. Sometimes I would read books upside-down to slow myself down because I’d read much faster than everyone else. (For anyone wondering, I don’t read much faster than average as an adult). But any metric which says that my actual reading level was something insane like Post-Highschool is probably not accurate.
I think it’s kind of like IQ tests, above a certain level of deviation it just breaks. I suppose that’s what “post-highschool” is meant to represent, but I really think it breaks down a lot sooner than that. There was no way I was going to be able to handle The Inferno in 3rd grade, and that’s more 9th grade reading level.
I’m the other end of this.
3rd grade, it was decided I was lazy and did not like to read. For the next three years 52 weeks a year, I had to read out loud to my Mother at least 4 age appropriate books a week. Ever since I have loved to read for entertainment. I do not like tech stuff unless it is something am interested in. That is my key, something I am interested in.
Had the same problem with arithmetic. Being terrified of my 4th & 6th grade math teacher, the same Nun, a year , 5th grade year doing workbooks 52 weeks a year, I can still do multiplication of two three digit numbers in my head in the time it took me to walk to the blackboard to just write the answer down. Yes, she was that scary .
I went to Catholic schools grades 1 to 12, … why do you ask? Bawahahaha
The sad thing to me is that the average 16 year old can’t make change, do long division, or understand a 3-4-5 right triangle or the usefulness of simple algebra as in V over I, R in a triangle.
There is a Subaru commercial that is running a lot about a young girl being taught to change a tire. In the rain no less. This type of thing is the biggest failure of the parents of kids today who are rather good at other parts of education.
The worked for car, phone or other will last. The given car, phone or other will be trashed. General observation.
A lot of good information in the above posts. Just wish there were more parents that cared & tried like these here.
When I was a kid, I was way above my age in math, English, art, music and science, among other things. I read an entire set of World Book Encyclopedias. My SAT score was 1600 (out of 1600).
But my father told me I’d never amount to anything, that I’d turn out to be a bum. He even told me he couldn’t believe I was his son. That’s what stuck. I didn’t begin to blossom until after my father’s death. By then I was 50.
OP: Keep encouraging Sophia. Let her know that she can achieve anything she wants to, but above all: Your love for her does not depend on her achievements.
My spouse gets no enjoyment from reading. For him, it’s just a tool. He reads for information and not entertainment. Thus, he doesn’t read novels or anything else of the sort. He does, however, read at a very high level.
You can be good at reading without enjoying reading.
As long as her grades are good I wouldn’t worry about it. Sounds like she can read well enough now to serve her for the rest of her life.
I taught myself to read at age 4. I was reading the books intended for ten years olds when I was five. But they were school-assigned texts. I didn’t read for my own enjoyment at all until I was 16.
Until then I was reading all the books and plays at whatnot that were assigned to me, mostly not enjoying them, and the only real literature I had read on my own bat was the Lord of the Rings at age 12, a singular anomaly of book consumption during that period of my life (and I only read the Hobbit stories, the Elven and Human adventures bored me).
I just hadn’t realised that there might be books that I’d enjoy, because none of what I’d read appealed to me. Until I discovered Terry Pratchett, then David Eddings, and all the new Fantasy that was coming out in a flood during the mid-to-late 80s.
Anyway, the point is you can have excellent reading, spelling, and comprehension skills without reading for pleasure.
I’m not worried at all - we are all our own people, right?
I’m just surprised that she scored so high on an activity that she doesn’t “work” on.
This is correct. I don’t know why I said that.
I don’t think reading and comprehension are really something you need to practice - as long as it comes naturally to you. You may enjoy it, or not enjoy it - but if the words hit your brain in such a way to create comprehension - it just happens. If you have a mind that picks up vocabulary, then you know the words and you aren’t lost in a sea of greek - and vocab can be picked up watching Doctor Who and talking to your parents.
Its one of the reasons I HATE the reading logs my kid’s school is so hot on. I don’t believe reading 20 minutes a day does any good for kids with natural ability - and for kids without the natural ability, it creates a hatred of reading to force it.
As someone who writes textbooks (and as a former fulltime teacher), I can tell you that readability–which is closely related to grade-level equivalents–is a very complicated subject. It is certainly not an exact science.
There are any number of measures out there that try to peg a particular piece of text to a number, whether a grade-level equivalent, a “readability score,” or something else. Each relies on a different algorithm. The algorithms are, we shall say, easy to manipulate. Something as straightforward as replacing a longer word with a shorter word (even if the longer word is more familiar) will tend to lower the score, while deleting a short sentence may raise it. “Lexile” scores, which I work with a lot, are notorious for this sort of thing.
Anyhow, “twelfth grade level” sounds a lot more…precise…than it probably is. It depends partly on how the readability is determined. It also depends partly on what kinds of questions are asked to determine how well the student has understood the material (multiple choice, short answer, details, big ideas…).
And as some posters have noted, “twelfth grade” may not be as impressive as it sounds. Here is a bit of frantic typing on my part that registers (on the Flesch-Kincaid scale*) at a grade equivalent of 11.9 (that is to say, twelfth grade):
“There were thirty-five blue donkeys, twenty-five purple elephants, and two hundred seventy-six Egyptian cats in the waiting room at Doctor Zoom’s office. The cats were all waiting for their friend Valerie, who was having her tonsils pulled, stuffed, and bronzed. The donkeys were there because they had taken a wrong turn at the supermarket and didn’t know how to put themselves into reverse. And as for the elephants, you may have heard that they never forget, but sadly this is not quite the case, as they had forgotten the way to the zoo and had misread the doctor’s name (Zoom) as Zoo. And by the way, no, despite what you may be thinking, this is not intended as political commentary, because after all the United States has no political party whose image is a cat.”
That may be what you think of off the top of your head as “twelfth grade” level. Or it may not.
(To show how this score can be manipulated, replacing the written numbers with numerals drops the score to 11.5, and doing that plus breaking the elephant sentence into two sentences–after “forget”–brings it down to 9.8. Sheesh.)
JohnT, none of this is in any way meant to impugn you or your daughter. Regardless of whether she is as good a reader as “twelfth grade” may indicate, it should be clear that she is a very capable reader. More important, she sounds like she’s a great person; you are lucky to have her, and that she is lucky to have you and your wife. Congratulations!
- The Fleisch-Kincaid scale is a standard part of Microsoft Word. You can actually measure the readability of anything you type using it. It can be a lot of fun. It’s also a huge time-waster…
No impugning taken!
I don’t think reading for pleasure and reading skills are matched. If her math scores came back off the charts would you be surprised because she is not covering her bedroom walls with equations?
If she took swimming lessons as a young kid, then didn’t visit the pool for 5 years and was able to swim around and not sink, would you be floored that she didn’t drown being that she wasn’t in the pool every day?
I guess as a non-reader I just don’t see how reading skills are related to reading for pleasure. You learn the rules of grammar and some reading comprehension, you say “ok I got it,” you read and interpret some stuff correctly on a test - bam, 12th grade level.