Positive Teacher Coaching – Take Learning Up a Level
I’m a firm believer that teachers need to know the reading level of the materials they use in the classroom. So often, the materials we use in our classrooms are much higher than the grade level we are teaching and, more importantly, higher than the reading level of our students.
Huge Discrepancies In Reading Levels
Recently, I’ve found huge discrepancies between Lexile scores, DRA’s (Developmental Reading Assessment) and Readablity formulas such as SMOG and FRY. When I asked a reading specialist to explain the difference at a conference recently, she evaded the question by telling me (and the audience) to simply pick one and stick to that one. I disagree.
Awareness of Reading Levels is Important
If there are “years” differences between a Lexile score, a DRA and the Flesch/Flesch–Kincaid Readability formula, it is my opinion that we should be aware of all of them and question why there is a discrepancy. Why? Because they measure different things and consequently give clues to student reading ease or difficulty.
Choosing Appropriate Materials Using Reading Level as One Indicator
The varied formulas measure different aspects of reading, so therefore, they can’t be compared. It’s like comparing apples to oranges. Also, knowing the reading level of the materials we use with our students guides us in using text that is ability appropriate. Without this awareness, how can we choose appropriate texts for our students and meet their individual reading needs?
Online Resources:
Comparison Chart for Reading Levels
An Examination of Current Text Difficulty Indices with Early Reading Texts
This tool is made primarily for English texts but might work also for some other languages. In general, these tests penalize writers for polysyllabic words and long, complex sentences. Your writing will score better when you: use simpler diction, write short sentences.
It also displays complicated sentences (with many words and syllables) with suggestions for what you might do to improve its readability.
Basic text statistics are also displayed, including number of characters, words, sentences, and average number of characters per word, syllables per word, and words per sentence.[/box]
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