Reading in lexiles
What’s a “lexile”?
a. An extinct lizard.
b. A system of measuring reading comprehension levels.
c. A set of exercises designed to strengthen the plexus muscle.
If you’re an educator you will have answered “b” … or would you?
What’s a “lexile”?
a. An extinct lizard.
b. A system of measuring reading comprehension levels.
c. A set of exercises designed to strengthen the plexus muscle.
If you’re an educator you will have answered “b” … or would you?
The system
The system of lexile measurement is a States-based system firmly bound by US education grades and expected levels of comprehension for each grade. If you are able to translate that to your local system then this tool could be useful.
The tool is available on this website.
It consists of a calculator where you:
1. Enter the grade level of your students, e.g.: Grade level 8 is aged 12-13 years approximately.
2. Enter either a percentage expected level of comprehension, or a range of lexile levels.
3. Click the Submit button and the calculator works out either the lexile range required or the percentage rate of comprehension.
4. Scroll down the page and you see a range of reading/comprehension books that fit students in the lexile range.
Writing to the range
If you want to check whether you are writing text at the required level you could use this tool to get a lexile range. You would select the grade that matched the reading age of your students, enter the expected level of comprehension as a percentage (how much you want them to understand the text) and Submit it. The calculator would display the lexile range required of the writing.
The lower the lexile score the simpler the language and the better the comprehension rate.
In order to check your writing against the lexile score you would use the Analyzer. This allows you to browse for your own file, upload it and have it analysed for ease of comprehension. You are fed back a lexile score, which you can compare with the lexile range for the grade of your students.
In my testing, a lexile score of 1210 equated to 74 Flesch Reading Ease and 6.4 Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.
The drawbacks
The only files you can upload for analysis are .txt files. Generally you won’t be writing your material in plain text so you will have to copy and paste into another document and you will probably have to do it many times to ensure all of your material is tested for comprehension.
The test takes no account of any accompanying pictures, or special layout, that might assist your students to understand the text.
And, of course, you have to be online to do the testing.
Posted by Heather Absalom-Smith at May 21, 2005 03:07 PM
