As common core standards become the new driving force behind our teaching, text complexity is of particular importance. This is driven by research that found that there is a 350 point gap between end of high school texts and beginning college texts. The Common Core standards are designed to
reduce this gap by increasing the demands as early as 2nd grade:
One way to define text complexity is by looking at its "Lexile level". At www.lexile.com, you can search for thousands of student books and get an estimated Lexile level. Conversely, you can type in the target Lexile you wish to read and a list of matching books will be returned. Typically, students should be reading between 100 points below their Lexile level to 50 points above.
For more information and examples of grade level text complexity as defined by CCSS, read Appendix A.
reduce this gap by increasing the demands as early as 2nd grade:
One way to define text complexity is by looking at its "Lexile level". At www.lexile.com, you can search for thousands of student books and get an estimated Lexile level. Conversely, you can type in the target Lexile you wish to read and a list of matching books will be returned. Typically, students should be reading between 100 points below their Lexile level to 50 points above.
For more information and examples of grade level text complexity as defined by CCSS, read Appendix A.