An overview created by the Clair E. Gale JHS Professional Learning Team Members:

1. The Lexile FrameworkAn Introduction for EducatorsThomas Schnick and Mark KnickelbineForward by A.J. Stenner An overview created by the Clair E. Gale JHS Professional Learning Team Members: Kass Cornish, Terry Felts, Heath Jackson, Margie Kennedy, Dusty Johnson.

2. Table of ContentsClick book icon to link to each chapter. • Chapter 1:The Dynamics of Reading Engagement • Chapter 2: Matching Readers and Texts • Chapter 3: The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric • Chapter 4: Why Lexiles Work • Chapter 5: Reader, Text, Context: Using Lexiles in Common Reading Situations • Chapter 6: Lexiles and Content Reading Contents Continued

3. Table of ContentsClick book icon to link to each chapter. • Chapter 7: Lexiles in the Media Center • Chapter 8: Using Lexiles with Reading Management Systems. • Chapter 9: Using Lexiles to Communicate with the Community • Chapter 10: Standard Setting with Lexiles • Lesson Plans and Additional Resources Back

4. Next Chapter 1:The Dynamics of Reading Engagement • Twenty-two percent of high school seniors fail to reach the level of basic reading competency. The educational careers of 25 to 40 percent of American children are imperiled because they do not read well enough, quickly enough or easily enough to ensure comprehension in their content courses in middle and secondary school. Although some men and women with reading disability can and do attain significant levels of academic and occupational achievement, more typically poor readers, unless strategic interventions in reading are afforded them, fare more poorly on the educational and, subsequently, the occupational ladder. Although difficult to translate into actual dollar amounts, the costs to society are probably quite high in terms of lower productivity, underemployment, mental health services, and other measures. • When students find it difficult to read, they read less, and it’s clear that students’ distaste for reading grows as they get older. Table of Contents

5. Next Chapter 1:The Dynamics of Reading Engagement Reading Engagement • People read for a reason • The key to reading engagement, is to help each student discover literacy as a means of fulfilling one’s desires, of achieving one’s purposes, and of satisfying one’s curiosity. Table of Contents

6. Next Chapter 1:The Dynamics of Reading Engagement “Fifth-Grade Shoes” There is no such thing as a pair of fifth grade shoes. When purchasing a pair of shoes, one might ask the following questions. • What will the shoes be used for (athletics, dress, hiking, etc) • What size of foot does the person have • What color or style does the person like Just as it is impossible to assume that all 5th graders wear the same size shoe, it is also impossible to assume that they all read at the same level. Table of Contents

7. Next Chapter 1:The Dynamics of Reading Engagement Conclusion Guiding students to engaging and rewarding reading experiences can be a very complicated task. Yet, the more we learn about the individual guidance of teachers to literacy experience is a vital part of every child’s reading development. The following chapters provide ideas for implementing individual reading activities. Table of Contents

8. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts Introduction: “As with the many reading-related metrics already available – test scores, percentiles, readability formulas, and the like- there is always the danger that we can begin to think of measuring student reading ability to be like measuring rainwater in a tube. Because the numbers we work with have the appearance of hard, objective facts, we begin to think of reading comprehension as something tangible that exists in a reader’s head.” LEXILES – along with other assessment tools – should be considered an approximation of the student’s ability. They cannot replace the experienced teacher as a judge of appropriateness of material. Table of Contents

9. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts The Teacher as a Guide: “While especially true for emerging readers, students at all levels need the teacher to serve as a literate, experienced guide who can help them negotiate the many decisions that must be made when choosing a text, whether for learning or sheer enjoyment.” “ . . . The process of selecting books and supplementary materials is best done as a shared process, the teacher serving as a guide to help students find the texts that reflect their interests and meet their developmental needs.” Table of Contents

10. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts • The Reader: • Background of Experience • Knowledge of Subject • Vocabulary • Developmental Level • Purpose and Motivation Factors to Consider: • The Text • Consistency with student’s background and reading purpose. • Format of the Book • Concept Difficulty • The Work’s Organization • Author’s Purpose • The Context • Reading Setting • Task Given – free reading vs. research • Objectives and Outcomes – stated and unstated expectations for reader Table of Contents

11. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts The Challenge of Matching: “By listening to students read aloud, an experienced teacher can spot the more advanced readers as well as the less proficient among the class. Indeed, the intuition born of personal experience will always be the teacher’s first and most important tool for guiding students.” “However . . . . as objective as one may try to be, the possibility for biased or mistaken judgments exists. . . . . Research shows that teacher judgments of the relative difficulty of textual materials can vary by as much as six grade levels (Jorgenson, 1977).” Table of Contents

12. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts FOR EXAMPLE: While the books below may be commonly placed in the same grade level grouping, their Lexile levels vary more than one might expect. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 900L Every Living Thing 1000L A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court 1050L Pudd’nhead Wilson 1130L The Prince and the Pauper 1600L Table of Contents

13. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts The Apples and Oranges Problem: “Grade level test scores are based on norms of student achievement; readability formulas are based on mathematical equations that model language difficulty. In short, there is no really relationship between a grade equivalency determined from a test score and one determined from a readability formula. Even though both appear to be giving the same kind of information, both are based on entirely different measurement.” “As such [grade equivalent] scores are best interpreted solely as an indication that a student’s performance was above or below average, and not as a reliable measure of student progress.” Table of Contents

14. Next Chapter 2:Matching Readers and Texts The Benefits of Lexiles: • Introduces a single, common scale that can be used to refer to both student ability and text readability. • Easy to understand and universally applicable to any test or reading assessment. • Permits us to consider multiple indicators as we judge a student’s reading ability and development. Table of Contents

15. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric What are Lexiles? • Lex- refers to words (lexicon.) • -iles refers to percentile or a comparative unit of measurement. • We use a standard unit with fixed units so that it doesn’t change with every reading (no stretchy rulers.) Table of Contents

16. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric What Does It Measure? • Semantic Difficulty: • Word Difficulty • Frequently encountered words are the easiest. • If we know how frequently a student has been exposed to a word we can derive a difficulty for each word. • Originally derived from a body of over 5,000,000 words sampled. • Testing has shown the validity of this predictor. Table of Contents

17. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric • Syntactic Difficulty • “Reading researchers have found that the best predictor of the difficulty of a sentence is its length.” • Longer sentences tend to be more complex or compound. • Longer sentences push the reader’s short term memory to hold more information. What Does It Measure? Table of Contents

18. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric Together: • By looking at both traits, a set measure of difficulty for a text can be derived. A text high on one scale but low on another may score lower overall because of its area on the graph. Syntactic Difficulty Symantec Difficulty Table of Contents

19. We can measure a student’s syntactic skills and semantic skills. By using the same scale to measure a text’s difficulty and a student’s ability, Lexiles form a clean comparison. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric Using the same scale: = Table of Contents

20. Lexiles describe a range of reading ability for each reader: 100 points below their score and 50 points above. This range shows the area at which a text becomes too easy and thus boring, or too hard and thus “stupid.” At the student’s score, the student should be able to grasp 75% of the text’s meaning. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric The Open Range Table of Contents

21. Next Chapter 3:The Lexile Framework – A Common Metric • By knowing the student’s range, we can adjust • By guiding students to texts that push them to improve, • By selecting texts which allow students to access information, • And by adjusting to suit other problems which might detract from student understanding. Adjusting: Table of Contents

22. Next Chapter 4:Why Lexiles Work • Introduction: An absolute scale for reading ability is needed to successfully match students’ reading skills to difficulty of text and to track the growth of students’ comprehension abilities. A. The Lexile Framework does this better than any other testing format because Lexiles are divided into regular intervals similar to thermometers. B. “Each Lexile unit is a standard measurement of text difficulty and/or student reading competence.” (p. 33) Table of Contents

23. Next Chapter 4:Why Lexiles Work • True Score Theorem A. Combination of student’s true ability and actual score B. Measurement errors 1. difference in testing procedures 2. testing bias 3. physical well being of student Table of Contents

24. Next Chapter 4:Why Lexiles Work • True Score Theorem C. Difference between student’s ability and his score is the estimate of errorwhich can identify the rangein which the student’s true score is found. “When a student takes an assessment that is targeted to his reading level …, then the standard error of measurement is minimized.” (p. 35) D. Multiple observations and then a comparison of the results can minimize the error of measurement. LEXILES CAN DO THESE!! Table of Contents

25. Next Chapter 4:Why Lexiles Work • How Lexiles Measure Text: A. Word Frequency 1. Word frequency in Lexile Analyzer, not in specific text. 2. Over 200 million words in corpus of Lexile Analyzer. B. Sentence Length/Complexity 1. More clauses 2. More information 3. Relationships between the bits of information. 4. Load on short term memory. Table of Contents

26. Next Chapter 4:Why Lexiles Work • How Lexiles Measure Text: C. Lexile Framework inserts these two measurements into an algebraic equation to determine the difficulty of the selected text. D. Anchor Points 1. Thermometer: freezing and boiling points 2. Lexiles: seven first grade primers and Grolier Electronic Encyclopedia. 3. Lexile = 1/1000 of the difference between these two anchor points. 4. Lexile Scale starts at 200 to prevent frequent occurrences of negative values. Table of Contents

27. Next Chapter 4:Why Lexiles Work • Conclusion: A. The Lexile Framework will work on most texts, the only exceptions being poetry, lists, and noncontinuous texts. B. The Lexile Framework is still only an estimate of student’s comprehension ability and reading skills, but it is the most accurate testing format available. Table of Contents

28. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Basic Rule of Thumb: • A student’s Lexile measure represents the level at which the student can read with 75% comprehension. • This measure defines 100 Lexiles below and 50 Lexiles above the student’s measure. • Use text lower in the student’s Lexile range when reading situation is more challenging. • For unsupported independent reading, avoid texts that are above the top end of the student’s Lexile range whenever possible. • In all reading situations, use the Lexile scale as an accurate and easy way to communicate abilities, text difficulties, and goals for reading comprehension growth and achievement. Table of Contents

29. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Stages of Reading Development: It takes most people 20 years to reach the highest stage of reading development. • Pre-reading stage – birth to age 6 • Associate words and sounds • Identify rhymes and alliteration • Acquire basic phonemic awareness • Begin to understand that words come in parts and those parts are used to form words • Stage One: 6 & 7 year-olds • INITIAL READING AND DECODING • Association of letters to the corresponding parts of spoken words • Notice subtle differences between similar-sounding words • Able to use knowledge to decode words not seen before Table of Contents

30. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work • Stage Two: 7 & 8 year-olds • Fluency • Reading familiar books • Rereading encourages fluency • Learn to use decoding skills • Competence and confidence comes from rereading familiar words Note: Proper development through this stage requires rereading many easy and familiar texts as well as functional and recreational reading during other parts of the school day. • Stage Three: 9 – 11 year-olds • Read for learning and exploration • Read new information for assigned and self-selected purposes • Read to acquire and synthesize information from multiple sources • Begin to acquire individual tastes and preferences Table of Contents

31. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work • Stage Four: Junior High / High School • Reading to learn, to enjoy, to accomplish academic work. Reading to do. • Critically analyze texts. • Further develop reading interests • Stage Five: College Level and Beyond • Mature reading • Moves from concrete reading to understanding the abstract • Assesses and evaluates information • Motivated by own purposes and tastes • Increases efficiency for career purposes and the breadth and depth of their reading experiences and tastes Table of Contents

32. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Using Lexiles to Adjust for Stages 1 & 2: • Adjustments for recognizable words: • Students should focus on materials at about 50L below personal Lexile measures • Shared reading or reading aloud is VERY important • Adjustment for familiar texts • Read aloud to an interested and supportive adult • Needing rereading experiences with familiar texts Adjustments for Stages 3 and Beyond: • Automaticity • Occurs when a reader’s cognitive load shifts from sounding out and recognizing words to reading for meaning Attention High School and Middle School Teachers: Readers who have not yet reached automaticity REGARDLESS OF THEIR AGE need to be targeted somewhat differently than more mature readers. Table of Contents

33. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Teaching Older Readers for Independent Reading: • After grade 3, students are expected to be “unglued from print” . . . In other words, the reader’s attention should be focused on understanding the text . . . Not sounding out words. • By 4th grade, students are “reading for learning the new” . . . the main purposes of reading are to acquire new information, explore new viewpoints, and develop an understanding of the world • When we target readers with a range of Lexiled books, we distinguish between targeting Stage 1 and Stage 2 readers and targeting readers who have passed the threshold to Stage 3 and beyond Note: As children move to higher stages of reading development, the content complexity grows. As the complexity grows, the child needs to have a broader and deeper expanse of knowledge and background to understand the technical and content – specific vocabulary. Table of Contents

34. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Adjusting for Text Characteristics: • Know the Lexile measures for the texts you want to use • Also use www.lexile.com where one finds the Lexile Library Adjusting for Format and Genre: • Clues that influence a student’s expectations about a text is difficult: • Lack of illustrations • Length of book/article • Density / type size • Topic / genre / author Supporting Tough Texts: • Know the Lexile measure of the text • Supply greater amounts of vocabulary and concepts as the text gets higher from the students’ Lexiles • Give instructional support BEFORE the reading activity takes place Table of Contents

35. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Strategies That Cause Students to Make Transformations: • Readers are liable to be more alert and engaged in the text when they can transform the text from the author’s words into those of the reader • Translate or retell what one has read with the text available • Recall / retell without looking back at the text • Rewrite / summarize with the text available • Summarize without consulting the text • Outline with and without available text • Represent the text in a student – constructed graphic organizer / illustration with the text available Table of Contents

36. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Instruction on Authentic Texts and Tasks: • Ways to achieve some level of relevance in school • Teaching methods / materials that are closer to the ways that REAL interests are built and language is learned • Construct an environment that excites interest and has life-like or problem-based orientation • Create instructional conversations: authentic interaction between people Strategies, Not Skills • Teach students to use strategies such as self-monitoring or self-fixing • Encourage students to take responsibility for their own reading and learning needs • Use question types that match instructional objectives (See Bloom’s Taxonomy or Marzano’s Dimensions of Thinking and Dimensions of Learning) Table of Contents

37. Next Chapter 5:Why Lexiles Work Adjustments for the Reading Content: • Reading / Language Arts Program • Group Reading and Guided Reading • Special Education Reading Programs • Home Reading / Summer Reading Programs Table of Contents

38. Next Chapter 6:Lexiles in Content Reading Introduction: • With a recent shift in emphasis from fiction to expository text come additional challenges for the reader to overcome. • “Many of these texts, while developmentally appropriate based on their content, often contain material at a readability level beyond the reader’s Lexile range. For example, these content-based texts often contain specialized vocabularies and explain complex concepts.” Table of Contents

39. Next Chapter 6:Lexiles in Content Reading Using the Lexile Framework Throughout the Curriculum: • “In general, assign texts at or below the student’s Lexile measure when factors make the reading situation more challenging, threatening, or unfamiliar. Use texts at or above the student’s Lexile measure to stimulate challenge and growth, or when you will be adding support such as teaching background concepts, pre-teaching vocabulary, or facilitating post-reading activities, such as reading discussion groups.” Table of Contents

40. Next Chapter 6:Lexiles in Content Reading Determining the Match Between Students and Textbooks: • Obtain the Lexile measures for the texts you wish to assign. • Rank the materials you wish to assign by Lexile measure. • Write down the current Lexile measures for your students, again ranking them by Lexile measure. • Compare the ranges of the Lexile measures to the student measures. How well do they correspond? ONE SIZE DOESN’T FIT ALL! Table of Contents

41. Next Chapter 6:Lexiles in Content Reading Teacher Read Aloud with Commentary: • Because it is easier to listen than read, learners understand new material better when they use their listening vocabularies. • While reading, the only time the teacher pauses is to make comments about the material, selecting hard words to explain or new concepts to relate. • This method works best if kept short – about ten minutes or so. • Post-reading activities help to consolidate learning. Table of Contents

42. Next Chapter 6:Lexiles in Content Reading Handling Content Density and Concept Overload: A team of researchers, Lloyd and Mitchell (1989) came up with three research questions which are the same questions content teachers need to consider when planning instruction: 1. How important is the concept to the curriculum? 2. How completely is the concept developed in the text? 3. What level of prior knowledge do students need in order to be able to understand the concept? If the concept is not covered clearly and thoroughly in the text, then you will need to support the textbook with additional instruction. Table of Contents

43. Next Chapter 6:Lexiles in Content Reading Reading Beyond the Textbook: The content teacher can circumvent these potential problems by relying more on supplemental materials for instruction. In addition to the more common supplements (newspapers and magazines to update students with current information), researchers strongly recommend using literature – novels, biographies, autobiographies, storybooks, and other works of fiction and nonfiction – throughout the curriculum (Anderson, 1996) Table of Contents

44. Next Chapter 7:Lexiles in the Media Center Media Center is the Center of Literacy Education: • Rich reading environment • Guide students to appropriate reading experience • Readability of texts • Better accessibility • Empower students to play a more self-directed role in reading development Targeting Students in the Media Center: • Use same targeting procedures as in the classroom • Media Specialist and Teacher need to be a team • Collaborate on Lexile Range of individual students • Collaborate to develop special collections to support class reading assignments • Collaborate on intervention strategies for students who need extra guidance • Replace grade-equivalent leveling with Lexile Range Students should be familiar with their Lexile Range Table of Contents

45. Next Chapter 7:Lexiles in the Media Center Book Labeling: • Label Books with Lexile Measures • Help students find books of interest at their appropriate reading level • Provide information on individual books as well as magazines • Apply metacognitive awareness to selection process along with other motivating factors: author, genre, information needs Note: Media Specialists and Teachers worry about “labeling books.” Sometimes this can be a barrier to intellectual freedom. It may appear that certain books are “off-limits” to some students. • If Lexile labeling is done sensitively and discreetly, it overcomes many concerns generated by grade-leveling Table of Contents

46. Next Chapter 7:Lexiles in the Media Center Collection Development: • Media Center’s Collection of Appropriate Reading Levels for the Student Population: • Media Specialist can analyze how well the current supply of reading materials fits the comprehension needs of the student body. • Using the Lexile Framework allows the specialist to develop a collection of books to meet the needs of all the students. • A media specialist can tell whether the collection of books is too challenging for its current population, too easy . . . or just right. • A well-rounded distribution of books will include easier books for leisure reading to more challenging material for study and exploration. The role of the media center has changed. It is no longer a place where books are housed . . . .but an extension of the classroom. Just as adults like choosing books themselves, so do students. With the Lexile Framework System in a library, students will be better able to chose the right book for their reading level. Table of Contents

47. Next Chapter 8:Using Lexiles with Reading Management Systems In general, reading management systems use quizzes to assess comprehension and produce reports containing a variety of information. • RMS’s started in the late 80’s • Characteristics: • Multiple choice quizzes for comprehension & recall • Provide immediate feedback • Award points based on length and difficulty (points can be used for extrinsic motivation) • Both on-screen and printable reports • First became popular because of student interest with computers, as well as incentive activities Table of Contents

48. Next Chapter 8:Using Lexiles with Reading Management Systems • Accelerated Reader • First marketed under “Read Up” • Most widely used through the 90’s • Over 25,000 fiction and nonfiction titles • Quizzes have 5 – 10 questions with multiple choice responses • Point value based on book length and readability level • Drawbacks: • Exclusive grade equivalent leveling • Readability formulas have changed over the years, creating inconsistencies • Although responses are random, each quiz for a book has the same questions (limits retake options and makes cheating more possible) • Fact-based questions fail to stimulate higher-level thinking • No provision for teachers to customize quiz length, passing score, point level, etc. Table of Contents

49. Next Chapter 8:Using Lexiles with Reading Management Systems • The Electronic Bookshelf • The first program widely available • Very similar to Accelerated Reader • Differences: • Quizzes provide three responses instead of four • Responses are drawn randomly for each quiz • Provides some protection against cheating • Permits student retakes • Highly customizable Table of Contents

50. Next Chapter 8:Using Lexiles with Reading Management Systems • Reading Counts • In 1998, Scholastic acquired the Electronic Bookshelf and upgraded it to create Reading Counts • Characteristics: • Multiple choice quizzes with 4 responses • Randomized item bank • Questions include inference and maid idea questions as well as basic recall • Includes book leveling in Lexiles, along with traditional grade leveling • Program can print stickers for Lexile labeling of books Table of Contents