Please read the excerpt below from "What Can Harry Potter Teach Us About Children and Reading?" By: Maria Salvadore (2005). The reading test method is highlighted, below. http://www.readingrockets.org/article/684
"Readability" is a term that teachers and librarians use to describe at what grade or ability level a piece of writing can usually be read. Many publishers will include a book's readability level on the back cover. There are various formulas to determine readability, some based on the number of letters per word or the number of words per sentence. The whole point is to match books to readers. We want to find books that a child can read successfully. What a child is able to read depends on his or her ability to decode words. This is being able to apply what he knows about the relationship between the sounds he hears and the spelling of words he sees on the page. Reading level also depends on how well a child understands the structure of language. Readers use that information to help them figure out (or decode) unfamiliar words as they read. I knew that my son could decode most of the words in the first Harry Potter book because I used the "Five Finger Test." I asked him to read a paragraph from the middle of the book aloud for me and I counted the number of words he couldn't read (not including proper names or coined words like Quidditch). If he missed more than five words or couldn't read the piece readily, then the book was probably too difficult. This is important to know because readers who spend all of their time figuring out words don't have the mental energy to understand or even enjoy what they're reading and then become frustrated. . . .
Please download this excerpt from The Sword in The Stone by T.H. White and have a grownup perform the five finger test for the whole page. If you miss more than five words or cannot read this page comfortably, please wait at least one half year before enrolling in a Young Readers' Series theme. If you do fine with this page, you can read any book in this series. If your grownup wants to discuss readability with a CTY administrator, please have the grownup phone 410-735-6140 (Dr. Steve Barish) or 410-735-6166 (Ms. Kathy Thurlow). | 
