Reading+skills



(1) Levels of Meaning (literary texts) or Purpose (informational texts). Literary texts with a single level of meaning tend to be easier to read than literary texts with multiple levels of meaning (such as satires, in which the author’s literal message is intentionally at odds with his or her underlying message). Similarily, informational texts with an explicitly stated purpose are generally easier to comprehend than informational texts with an implicit, hidden, or obscure purpose.
 * Qualitative considerations: **

(2) Structure. Texts of low complexity tend to have simple, well-marked, and conventional structures, whereas texts of high complexity tend to have complex, implicit, and (particularly in literary texts) unconventional structures. Simple literary texts tend to relate events in chronological order, while complex literary texts make more frequent use of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and other manipulations of time and sequence. Simple informational texts are likely not to deviate from the conventions of common genres and subgenres, while complex informational texts are more likely to  conform to the norms and conventions of a specific discipline. Graphics tend to be simple and either unnecessary or merely supplementary to the meaning of texts of low complexity, whereas texts of high complexity tend to have similarly complex graphics, graphics whose interpretation is essential to understanding the text, and graphics that provide an independent source of information within a text. (Note that many books for the youngest students rely heavily on graphics to convey meaning and are an exception to the above generalization.)

(3) Language Conventionality and Clarity. Texts that rely on literal, clear, contemporary, and conversational language tend to be easier to read than texts that rely on figurative, ironic, ambiguous, purposefully misleading, archaic or otherwise unfamiliar language or on general academic and domain-specific vocabulary.

(4) Knowledge Demands. Texts that make few assumptions about the extent of readers’ life experiences and the depth of their cultural/literary and content/discipline knowledge are generally less complex than are texts that make many assumptions in one or more of those areas.

The core standards recommend using lexile scores to help determine the difficulty of a text - your school media specialist can help you to understand these scores and find out the lexile score for books you are using, but it is essentialy a software based measure of text complexity by counting length of words, word type, sentence complexity, etc.
 * Quantitative considerations: **

**The following information is from www.lexile.com, the company that measures these features and publishes scores.**

The table below shows the middle 50% of reader measures and text measures for each grade. The middle 50% is called the interquartile range (IQR). The lower number in each range marks the 25th percentile of readers or texts and the higher number in each range marks the 75th percentile of readers or texts. It is important to note that 25% of students and texts in the studies had measures below the lower number and 25% had measures above the higher number. Data for the reader measures came from a national sample of students.

Typical Reader Measures, by Grade
25th percentile to 75th percentile (IQR) ||
 * Grade || Reader Measures, Mid-Year
 * 1 || Up to 300L ||
 * 2 || 140L to 500L ||
 * 3 || 330L to 700L ||
 * 4 || 445L to 810L ||
 * 5 || 565L to 910L ||
 * 6 || 665L to 1000L ||
 * 7 || 735L to 1065L ||
 * 8 || 805L to 1100L ||
 * 9 || 855L to 1165L ||
 * 10 || 905L to 1195L ||
 * 11 and 12 || 940L to 1210L ||

Data for the first column of text measures came from a research study designed to examine collections of textbooks designated for specific grades (MetaMetrics, 2009). The "stretch" text measures (defined in 2010 through studies related to the development of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts) in the second column represent the demand of text that students should be reading to be college and career ready by the end of Grade 12.

Typical Text Measures, by Grade

 * Grade || Text Demand Study 2009

25th percentile to 75th percentile (IQR) || "Stretch" Text Measures

25th percentile to 75th percentile (IQR) ||
 * 1 || 230L to 420L ||= 220L to 500L ||
 * 2 || 450L to 570L || 450L to 620L ||
 * 3 || 600L to 730L || 550L to 790L ||
 * 4 || 640L to780L || 770L to 910L ||
 * 5 || 730L to 850L || 860L to 980L ||
 * 6 || 860L to 920L || 950L to 1040L ||
 * 7 || 880L to 960L || 1000L to 1090L ||
 * 8 || 900L to 1010L || 1040L to 1160L ||
 * 9 || 960L to 1110L || 1080L to 1230L ||
 * 10 || 920L to 1120L || 1110L to 1310L ||
 * 11 and 12 || 1070L to 1220L ||= 1210L to 1360L ||

This file contains some examples of readings used in social studies and how their complexity is measured: