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I read the article moving beyond readability, which I felt that how a teacher should choose a successful trade book for their students, is how the article stated, "it needs to make the student strive, comprehend and discuss it with other." This is very important for students to be engaged and understand the book to be successful.

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Seems like using trade books as supplemental material is a great way to not only promote engagement amongst students, but they also are great for gaining a different viewpoint on a topic being studied as well as being able to provide additional information that may not be covered by the main text being read!
—- Joshua Groesser

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Article By Dr. Martie Young at Northwestern Oklahoma State University
Discussing Readability: Meaning how easy a piece of writing is to read and understand. Factors that readability depends on" content, structure, style, layout, and design.
Formulas measure readability and predict the difficulty level of a text.
Conventional formula: average word length and sentence length to provide a grade level score.
Types of Readability Formulas:
-Flesch-Kincaid: considered oldest/most accurate, simple. Used for school text.
(See article for detailed steps to use this formula and analyze the results).
Built into Microsoft Word. Click File, options, proofing, show readability statistics. OK
-Dale-Chall: New, uses a count of 'hard' words and calculates US grade level of a text based on sentence length and the number of 'hard' words (words that do not appear on a specially designed list of common words familiar to 4th graders) Accurate: based on familiar words not syllable or letter counts. (See article for detailed steps to use this formula and analyze the results)
-Fry Graph-One of the more popular reading formulas, graph-based test used through high-school. Primary and secondary school.  (See article for detailed steps to use this formula and analyze the results)
-SMOG-Index: Estimates years of education a person needs to understand a piece of writing. Created as an improvement. Uses 100% correct-score criterion, compared to 50-75% for others.  (See article for detailed steps to use this formula and analyze the results)
-McAlpine EFLAW: Used when English is a foreign language. Based on long sentences and high proportion of miniwords (both are hard for EFL readers). The lower the score the fever the flaws.  (See article for detailed steps to use this formula and analyze the results)
Link to access formulas: https://www.readabilityformulas.com/free-readability-formula-tests.php    Copy and paste text for a calculation!
Examples can be found in the article for primary, middle grade, and advanced.
Advantages:
1. Provides writer with information to reach target audience.
2. Skips going through the text to find out the reading level. (Saves time/money)
3. Easy to use
4. Increase retention, comprehension, and speed when you have reading options at the right level
5. Readable text-attract larger reading base
Disadvantages:
1. Understanding is different from readability.
2. Cannot measure complexity of word or phrase to pinpoint where corrections need to be made.
3. Wide variations of results due to wide variations of formulas.
4. Apply math to lit, not favorable.
5. Cannot measure context, prior knowledge, interest level, difficulty of concepts, or coherence of the text.

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What Should Students Read? Pg 1-10

Steve Wolk wrote this article to explore what students are reading and the impact it is having on students' reluctance to read. Wolks first highlights the idea that the books that students read are still the same from the ones their parents read 30 years ago. He makes the agreement that the material does not simulate current day problems, leading to disengaged readers within the student population. He points out the lack of cultural relevance, diversity, and varied text within today's classrooms. Wolk promotes the use of current news articles, literacy magazines, graphic novels, and many other types of material that would be engaging for students (pg 8). Wolk wraps up the article by encouraging teachers to understand that reading is a lifelong endeavor and the way you choose to teach them can have a positive or negative impact on that endeavor.

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I read "Trade books In The Content Classroom". According to pages 1-12, trade books can offer further explanations and content over textbooks, and also can explain things in a different format presented/written in a way that may be more accessible given a reader's reading and comprehension abilities, as well as provide viewpoints on a variety of topics. Different viewpoints can be potentially seen as a negative though depending on what is being read about as they could contain biases about a topic; they should not be a substitute for a textbook, but a supplement to them as students read them on their own or if the reading is as a whole class during a read-aloud by the teacher. While reading trade books (regardless if it's a read-aloud or with a partner, in groups, or on their own independently) students can also apply reading/note taking strategies in order to guide their reading and comprehension of the trade book, but be sure that the students are aware of why they are reading the book in the first place/how it relates to whatever topic is being learned/taught in class.

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Hello,
As I read Breaking The Barriers To Reading Success in Middle and High schools (page 2), Trade books are rich in narrative and informational content, they can provide a valuable complement to most textbooks (using them as a add-on). Using trade books, can help, motivate, and engage students to wanting to read more.  In addition, trade books come in all reading levels to help build reading comprehention and fluency to the student. Not only is this helping the student with its literacy skills but this strategy also involves the student by involving them to learn in their own way, when choosing a tradebook related topic. I believe that this a great strategy for reading (SSR) classes, because it does show that studetns love to learn in their own different styles and interests.

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