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1) REVIEW the Assessing Text Complexity (Chapter 4) If currently in the classroom it would be ideal if you conduct these assessments with your students. You can still complete this assignment if you are not in the classroom.

2) SELECT a text that are currently using or will be in a future lesson (this can be ANY book, informational text, poem, play, short story, etc.).

3) CONDUCT one of the readability assessments on your selected text.

4) POST your results in the column to the RIGHT with your NAME on it.

Discuss your rationale for choosing this text/selection, (i.e. is it particularly challenging for a

portion of your students?

What assessment did you conduct? What were the results of your text difficulty analysis?

Please complete by Wednesday.

Activities Rubric

Yes | No | Does your “activity” work meet the following criteria?

Post COMPLETE answers to questions in #4 above on class Padlet.

Completed all work in satisfactory (or greater) quality and by Wednesday of each week.

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1) Read the chapter

2) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

3) I used both the Lexile Level assessment (I looked this up out of curiosity), and I conducted the Fry Readability assessment.

4) The Lexile Level Assessment revealed that The Great Gatsby has a score of 1070L. This score puts it in the 11-CCR grade band. The Fry Readability Assessment puts The Great Gatsby in the 11.5 grade level range. Both of these assessments are giving similar results.

I chose this book because I have read this book both in high school and in college. When I was in high school, I did not get as much out of it as I did in college. I wanted to know what the level of this book was because I wanted to see if the lack of understanding of the literary themes in high school was related to immaturity of the reader. This is a challenging book, but it also is a great book to use in the classroom because of the vast themes present in it.

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1) Read the chapter, reviewed Assessing Text Complexity

2) The Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

3) I used the Lexile Level Assessment and Fry Readability Graph to compare results

4) Lexile - 790L which places the text in the Grade 4-5 Band. The Fry Readability test placed this book at 5.9. These assessments give similar readability results.
But what this shows me is that there are other factors to take into account, as I would not introduce this book until at least the 9th grade due to mature content. The story is about coming of age and the experiences of a high school student, including mature language and behaviors.
I chose this book because it has always been fascinating to see who can relate to Holden and why; was it one certain event, or just his deep down insecurities they, too, struggle with. The book is a great way to have freshman think about their own experiences: growing older, new found independence, rebellion, distrust. Although it is written simply, there are so many themes meant for older students.

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1. Read Chapter 4.
2. The poem "Thoughts of Hanoi" by Nguyen Thi Vinh was selected.
3. I used the Content Area Reading Inventory (CARI) in order to evaluate the students text comprehension.
4. The poem was chosen based on the geographic location of the poem and vocabulary from the country that many students were not familiar with. The CARI method has the advantage of allowing the instructor to meet students needs in pre and post reading activities. First, I was able to gather information about how well they responded literally to the facts--not knowing terminology prevented them from getting the gist of the poem. Many students who were unfamiliar with Vietnam and the villages mentioned in the poem were not successful at answering questions initially (even with an open book assessment.)  A CARI strategy gives me the ability to establish some background knowledge and vocabulary prior to a test so that students are better prepared to succeed on interpreting a poem.

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1)    I reviewed “Assessing Text Complexity" in chapter four from our assigned text.

2)    I selected “Day 2” from the “Intro. To Computer Science” Module” in Paxton Patterson’s online Learning Management System which I use in my classroom.

3)    Each module equates to a book and each day within the module represents a chapter, so I am essentially evaluating the readability of a single chapter within the module.

4)    This particular “chapter” describes binary code and how digital information works.  I chose this text because I feel that this particular module presents a bit more complex information than other modules in the online system, and I wanted to test that perception.  I chose to conduct the “Frye Readability Graph” and found that with an average sentence length of 5.37 sentences per 100 words, and the average syllable count being 164, the content is approximately on a twelfth grade reading level!  I am teaching this to seventh graders, so the material is understandably difficult for them.  One thing I find particularly important is that quite often words with a higher syllabic count are repeated.  (e.g. computer, computing, computational, programming, processing, information, electricity.)  Therefore, focusing on vocabulary will ease the challenge of readability.

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2) A scientific article from Harvard University on the sanitation and use of raw materials regarding hand dryers versus paper towels in bathroom settings. https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-bacterial-horror-of-the-hot-air-hand-dryer-2018051113823

4) This article is pertinent within our ‘Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle’ unit for 9th grade standards regarding the use of paper towels. I ran the Fry Readability test since it was an online article as opposed to a book within the database. I was unable to find the article within the Lexile database.

• For the results of the Fry test, I got 148 words over 4.5 sentences, giving the article a readability score within the 9th grade range, nearly bordering the 10th grade reading level. There are several scientific words within the text which are new terms for most of the students.

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1) I reviewed the "Assessing Text Complexity" in our book.

2) I selected The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton because it is a book my eighth graders will read this year, and I read it when I was an eighth grader myself. I don't remember thinking this was a challenging read, but this was many years ago when I read the book for the first time.

3) I chose to conduct the Fry Readability Graph because I am really interested in sentence length and word length as an art. I think that students don't consider the artistic or rhetorical effect of sentence and word variation because they're not explicitly taught this skill, but I am fascinated by it and aim to teach my students this observation of purposeful sentence variation.

4) I used the first two paragraphs from chapter one of The Outsiders, and I found that the average sentence length per 100 words was 4.7, and the average number of syllables was 129. This showed that the approximate grade level is between 7th and 8th grade. This feels accurate to me. When I reread the book, I remember feeling the language (while it contains lingo from the 60s) is very accessible.

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I chose the book Front Desk by Kelly Yang. This text is relatable to many students who either are immigrants themselves or have immigrant parents. Both of these experiences are covered in this book which can be interesting and relevant to my students. It is also a challenging book for third graders because it is at the higher end of the Lexile scale and a long chapter book. So I thought it would be useful to evaluate it further.

I conducted the Lexile level assessment and the book is 640L which falls in the higher elementary level (grades 3-5). I also conducted a Flesch Reading test because it is one of the most commonly used readability scales and Front Desk is rated 77.8, which is defined as “fairly easy to read”. It is comparable to the readability of a book like Harry Potter. Both assessments confirm that this book is suited for higher elementary students.

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1) Review
2) SELECT - Newsela "Chinese-Americans educate US about an Old Law that Excluded Their Ancestors"
I selected this one for my 8th Grade Social Studies Class: currently working on Immigration in the Gilded Age.

3) CONDUCT - I love Newsela, but I didn't know what the Lexile numbers meant until last week.
Lexile: 950L = 6-8th Grade level
Fry: on the line between 6-7th (if I did it correctly!)

4) POST - complete
I selected this passage because Newsela allows me to give the reading comprehension questions after the short read. My students respond better to this source versus our textbook. I prefer Documents Based Questions, over either. However, I work with the ELA teacher to improve Informational Text strategies for the EOG.

Since the Lexile number is provided with Newsela, I did not feel it was fair to use it as my only measure. I attempted the Fry model, but it was difficult to make sure I did not select proper nouns or miscount syllables.

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Chelsea                        Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

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Chelsea                        Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

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1. Fry Readability: This poem has 240 words, approximately 8 sentences per 100 words and 145 syllables. This makes this poem's Fry Readability at a grade 7.
2. Lexile Level Assessment: I used the following site to analyze this poem for the Lexile scale: https://hub.lexile.com/analyzer
It put this poem at 810-1000L.
3. I choose this poem because although it is not complex in vocabulary, it is in content.  I think it is an intense expression of self.  I think it is difficult for a student to rationalize or make connections with, particularly male students. It also requires background knowledge of the author and the time period for further understanding.  I do not think the Fry or Lexile assessments do it justice.  I wanted to experiment with a poem because it seemed that both of these assessments were too broad for poems, but the Lexile was closer.  I would probably not work with students on this poem until high school personally.

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1) Read the chapter

2) "Fire and Ice" by Robert Frost

I selected this text because it was a text that I read multiple times throughout my years of schooling. I also think it really is a really good text that can be supplemental to any text talks about death. It is also a very short text can easily be added as quick activity in any classroom. I also believe that text is not too complicated, but since I read the text a couple of times over the years, I wanted to see what grade level the text stood at.

3) I used Lexile Level Assessment. The score that this poem received was 810L - 1000L. This places the poem in the grades 6-8 range on the current band. This confirmed my thinking as I read the poem in both 6th and 9th grade. This is also where I desire to teach and it fits as a great text that could with books such as "The Giver" or early of parts of "The Outsiders." I was very curious to see what the Fry Readability Graph scored this poem on in comparison, but the poem is less than 100 words.

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1. Reviewed Assessing Text
Complexity

2. Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston

3.  I decided to compare the Lexile
Assessment and the Fry
Readability Assessment

4.  This book has a Lexile measure
of 890L, which is in the 6-8
Grade Band. The Fry Readability
Assessment scored Their Eyes
Were Watching God at a 6th
grade reading level.

I chose this book because I
wanted to focus on a book
commonly read in high school
that was written by an African
American author.  Given our
previous conversations on CRT,
this may be a book that I
consider teaching in one of my
high school classrooms. Lastly,
it’s also considered a classic of
the Harlem Renaissance, which
is a time period that I’ve
studied in college.

Our textbook reading
referenced that the Lexile
measure is not an indicator of
the content of a text. I think
Their Eyes Were Watching God
is a good example of this given
that it scored in the middle
school grade levels for both
assessments, but is typically
taught in high school. The
topics and language used in the       novel have most likely
influenced when this material is       taught rather than its actual
reading level.

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1. Reviewed Assessing Text Complexity.
2. "The Miller’s Tale" from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (translated from Middle English).
3. Using the Lexile Level Assessment, a 250 word excerpt from "The Miller's Tale" received a score of 610L - 800L. According to this rating, the text is suitable for 6th to 8th grade. When the same excerpt was mapped on the Fry Readability graph, it rates as appropriate reading material for 6th and 7th grade.
4. I chose an excerpt from The Canterbury Tales because it is a piece of literature that I personally struggled with as a 9th grader. I was curious to see what readability score it would produce when measured by systems such as the Lexile Level Assessment and Fry Readability approach. I was surprised by the results. While these tools are helpful, I believe that some of these readability scoring methods are not foolproof in the sense that they cannot accurately assess a piece of a work with features such as a poetic style and subject context. I would not personally assign The Canterbury Tales to 6th graders, but I am eager to work with the text again in the future. Because I will be teaching in High Schools, I hope I will have the opportunity to study it with a 10th or 11th grade class.

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2) The book I selected is Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kenney.

3)I used both The Fry Graph and the Lexile Levels to measure.

4)Lexile results are 950L which is appropriate for 7th Grade. For the Fry Graph the book is also for 7th grade. Results from the Fry Readability tool:
Average # of syllables per 100 words: 127
Average # of sentences per 100 words: 5.7

I chose this book as it is one my son's favorite and I know that a lot of his classmates like it too. However, after reading the book I found a lot of materials that are not measured with the above tools. These are not necessarily inappropriate but for example the concepts of laziness is ok, lying is ok, talking about others in a disrespectful way also. All these are concepts I would be concerned if my students are introduced to.
I know from assessing my own
son that he believes that a lot of things in this book are cool and real and
this is a problem for me as a mother and as teacher in the future.

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1. I read Chapter 4, "Assessing Text Complexity".
2. My selected text is an eBook titled "The Circulatory System" from Epic!. I chose this book because we are studying the human body systems and I wanted to determine the approximate reading achievement level students would need to comprehend the content.
3. I used the Fry Readability Graph and calculated the average number of sentences to be 12 and calculated the average number of syllables to be 144. Plotting the average number of sentences and average number of syllables gave a 5/6 approximate grade level. More specifically, the intersection of the two lines landed exactly on the line between grade 5 and 6.

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1) Read Assessing Text Complexity (Chapter 4)

2) Monster by Walter Dean Myers

3) The readability assessment I chose to conduct is Lexile Level Assessment. I also utilized the Fry Readability Graph.

4) When I conducted the Fry Readability Graph, the combination of the amount of sentences and number of syllables per sentence also placed the book at a 3rd grade reading level. Per Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz (2017) this formula measures sentence length and and word length to help determine the readability level of the material.

I used https://fab.lexile.com/search/results to assess the Lexile Level of Monster. It received a score of 670L. Per Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz (2017), the Lexile Level Assessment state that texts in the  range of 450L-725L (current lexile band) and 450L-790L (stretched lexile band) can be read by grades 2-3. However, the authors go on to state that this readability assessment measures text complexity not the content of the material or any prior knowlege the reader will need before reviewing the material (Vacca, Vacca, & Mraz, 2017). I selected this book because students seem to enjoy reading it, and it is a great introduction to a narrative novel. Although it is not linguistically complex, the subject matter is more mature and requires more complex reasoning and understanding than it’s Lexical Level suggests.

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1) I read "Assessing Text Complexity" in Vacca, Vacca, Mraz.

2) I am not currently a teacher.  I read 3 articles in a recent Wall Street Journal (2/13/2020)

3) I chose the Fry Graph Method as it was the only suitable 'test' for a newspaper.

One article was "World Health Organization  Criticized for Virus Response" - 100 words, 4.5 sentences, 195 syllables.

One article was "Bayer Seeks to Settle Cases, Keep Roundup"  - 100 words, 4.25 sentences, 98 syllables.

One article was "U.S. Investigates Harvard, Yale Over Foreign Funding." - 100 words, 1.9 sentences, 188 syllables.

Each of these seem to fall on the 17+ age range on the Fry Readability Graph.

I also chose some books from my library to see how they would measure on the Lexile Level.

James Michener - Tales of the South Pacific (730L)

David McCullough - John Adams Biography (1300L)

Although these codes do not have AD (adult learner) before the number, I think both of the above books should probably fall in that category . I see in the http://lexile.com website that Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are" has a Lexile text measure of 740L, which is around average reading ability for a child completing 4th grade.  This is a bit confusing> . When I placed James Michener's -Tales of the SOuth Pacific in the Lexile System, for their readability score, I was given 730L for Michener's book.  I must have registered it incorrectly....?

The coding system was intriguing.
NC: Non-Conforming for high-ability readers who have trouble finding books that challenge their reading skills but still have age-appropriate content.

HL: High-Low
IG: Illustrated Guide
GN; Graphic Novel
BR: Beginning Reader
NP: Non-Prose

Each one is quite detailed in how it's labeled and why, in order to correctly identify suitable reading materials.

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1) REVIEW---- I reviewed the techniques and assessments in chapter 4.

2) SELECT--I selected some pages from classroom textbook for American History 2. It is called The Americans.

3) CONDUCT-- I conducted an assessment by typing in a page in a lexile score generator. It came back as a lexile score of between 1010L and 1200L.  This is typical of a high school textbooks as they are designed to be read by 9th to 12th graders. Furthermore, some students come to high school not on grade level with their reading. I created a comprehension reading inventory for American History 2 modelled after figure 4.7 in the Chapter 4.

4) POST your results in the column to the RIGHT with your NAME on it.

Discuss your rationale for choosing this text/selection, (i.e. is it particularly challenging for a

portion of your students?
I decided to use the textbook because it is something that we use every so often in the class. However, I have never really assessed students' ability to read and comprehend the textbook.

What assessment did you conduct? What were the results of your text difficulty analysis?
I used the comprehension inventory to assess my students. I asked them to read 6 pages. Most students took between 13-20 minutes. Most students were about to articulate what the section was about. However, a number of students only wrote one or a few words. In the future, I must be specific that they need to write a few sentences. In the true and false questions, must students got those correct. With about 82% of the students selecting the correct answer.  Some students struggled with the implication questions and a lot more struggle with the "what if" prediction question at the end.  This gave a lot of information that will be helpful as we move forward. Some of my students struggle with reading and this activity highlighted that struggle a little more. I already knew this but having hard data helps me justified more scaffolding and support for those students.

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1. Review the Assessing Text Complexity.

2. Hotel Bruce – Ryan T. Higgins

3. Lexile Level – 510L (second or third grade)

4. I chose a picture book to use with my future ELL students in lower elementary. According to the Lexile level Hotel Bruce is in the range for second and third grade English speaking students. Therefore, it would be challenging for students who are still learning English. The book has short sentences and pictures illustrating it, which would help ELLs understand the text and gain new vocabulary. I particularly chose this book because it make use of common words that ELLs learn in their first months in the country, such as: animals, numerals, seasons, feelings and parts of the house. It could be used as a resource to introduce those words or review the material studied before.

During classroom observations a couple of months ago, I noted that ELL students relied heavily on pictures to draw meaning from the text, and some of their books were bilingual (English/Spanish). Hotel Bruce is only in English, but the pictures illustrate the message of the text well. It would also be interesting to ask students what meaning they get from the pictures and compare it with the written text’s message.

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1.  Chapter 4 CAPI
2.  A CommonLit passage called, "The 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing."
3.  CommonLit passages are very informative.  I choose this passage because of Black History Month and I wanted to get my students to share more feelings when reading and interacting with a text. This passage has a Lexile of 1110 for 5th grade readers.  This is the grade I teach.
4.  I started out with silent reading of the the introduction and first 2 paragraphs.  After students were done reading, I opened the discussion by asking  the question "What mood do you think the author was trying to get you in after your reading?"  "Did you want to read more?"  "What stood out for you during the reading?"

The overall results were good. After reading everyone wanted to contribute to what they read. The class shared feelings of sadness, anger, and disbelief. Some students read some of what stood out to them. After the discussion, students continued to read the passage independently and was asked to answer the questions. 18/20 students answers the questions with 100% accuracy. I believe this was because of the story content and strong interest in 4 young girls killed with over 20 sticks of dynamic. The two that did not answer with 100% missed on question that involve describing mood of the passage due to vocabulary deficits.

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1) REVIEW:  I read chapter 4.
2) SELECT:  I selected Classic Starts: Peter Pan (Classic Starts Series) from the WCPSS 3rd Grade EL unit of study.
3) SCORING:  The assessments that I used are the Fry Readability Graph and the Lexile Levels. For use with the Fry Readability Graph, I scored excerpts from Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Chapter 3 of the book.
4) RESULTS:  The text difficulty analysis using the Fry Readability Graph rendered results indicating that the book is on a 6th Grade reading level.  It was more difficult to find a Lexile Level for the exact Peter Pan book that I used. A version sold by Scholastic is level 1040L, around an 8th or 9th grade level . A graphic novel version was leveled at GN520L, right at the 3rd grade level. And another version titled Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy), is leveled 900L, set around a 7th grade level. With the graphic novel being mostly illustrations, it may not be the best literary choice to be used with students. The other Lexile Levels along with the Fry assessment all indicate that Peter Pan is suited for 6th through 9th graders even though WCPSS using it with it's 3rd Grade literacy program.

5) RATIONALE:  I chose this text/chapter because is it particularly challenging for most of the students in the class. They struggle with many of the literary elements as well as the vocabulary. I wanted to try the Fry assessment myself as this kind of analysis draws me in. I'm including pics of my analysis.

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