Within Oxford Reading Buddy, Oxford Reading Levels underpin the student’s user experience – across Coaching Books, the eBooks Library and quizzes – ensuring they are given the right books to read, asked the right kinds of questions and supported in their reading development at the right pace.
At Oxford, we use an expertly developed and well-established system for levelling our books, and it has been used to develop many of our popular and well-loved series such as the Oxford Reading for Comprehension, Oxford Reading Tree, Treetops and Project X reading programs that feature in the Oxford Reading Buddy library.
These programs offer different types of reading practice:
Phonics
All of Oxford’s decodable series (excluding Project X Code) follow a structured phonic progression matched to the Letters and Sounds phonic sequence. Oxford Reading Levels follow this sequence too, letting you know exactly when new letters and sounds will be introduced in our decodable books.
Comprehension
Oxford’s comprehension series support the development of comprehension in all students. Oxford Reading Levels are the foundation of these programs, offering a finely gradated sequence that supports students’ understanding of texts through the careful introduction of increasing challenge across word reading skills, sentence structure, punctuation, vocabulary, layouts, prior knowledge and context and inferential comprehension.
Each new level offers new language, new themes and a chance to consolidate comprehension skills.
There is, therefore, both a science and an art to developing texts using Oxford Reading Levels – and it is this combination that helps to create books that students will want to and be able to read. Careful consideration is given to the specific words used, the number of words per page, the number and grammatical complexity of sentences and so on; but factors such as page layout, design and illustration and the age or emotional appropriateness of the content are also considered.
The 21 Oxford Reading Levels both reflect and support children’s development as readers through the primary school phase. Progression in a range of reading skills is woven through Oxford Reading Levels including word reading, vocabulary development, different text structures and grammatical features, exposure to a range of genre and writing styles and, of course, reading comprehension.
You can access clear reports on student attainment and progress linked to Oxford Levels, and can trust that Oxford Reading Levels provide a clear developmental framework for reading.
You can find out more about the Oxford Reading Levels using the links below including how Oxford Reading Levels correlate to other levelling systems that are used in schools, such as Book Bands.
For more information on assessing a student’s Oxford Reading Level, see our Placement Guidance for Oxford Reading Levels page.
Below shows how many eBooks are available at each Oxford Reading Level:
| Level | Number of eBooks |
|---|---|
| 1 | 9 |
| 1+ | 27 |
| 2 | 27 |
| 3 | 27 |
| 4 | 35 |
| 5 | 35 |
| 6 | 35 |
| 7 | 29 |
| 8 | 29 |
| 9 | 23 |
| 10 | 23 |
| 11 | 23 |
| 12 | 17 |
| 13 | 17 |
| 14 | 16 |
| 15 | 16 |
| 16 | 13 |
| 17 | 13 |
| 18 | 13 |
| 19 | 12 |
| 20 | 12 |