Dear Parents,
It’s hard to believe that the first quarter has come to and end, and now we are well into the second quarter. I want to take this opportunity to discuss with you how “Reading Lexiles” are critical for your child’s reading development.
Lexiles
As a parent, you need to be aware of your child’s Reading Lexile level (Grades 2-6). Your child’s teacher will use the SRI test to determine your child’s Lexile level. Lexile measures are the most widely adopted reading measures in use today. Tens of thousands of books and tens of millions of newspaper and magazine articles have Lexile measures — more than 450 publishers Lexile their titles. In addition, all major standardized reading tests and many popular instructional reading programs can report student reading scores in Lexiles. Implementation of the Lexile Framework has led to reading success and improved reading enjoyment at all levels of proficiency.
What Does Lexile Measure?
A Lexile measure is a valuable piece of information about either an individual’s reading ability or the difficulty of a text like a book or magazine article. The lexile measure show shown as a number with an “L” after it—880L is 880 Lexile. The idea behind the lexile framework for reading is simple: if we know how well a student can read and how hard a specific text is to comprehend, we can predict how well that student will likely understand the text.
How are books Measured?:
Lexile measures are based on two factors: word frequency and sentence length – both of these factors, over decades of research, have been shown to be excellent predictors of how difficult text is to comprehend.
Longer sentence lengths and words of lower frequency lead to higher Lexile measures; shorter sentence lengths and words of higher frequency lead to lower lexile measures
Measured using the SRI (Scholastic Reading Inventory)
The student Lexile measure marks the level of text a student can read with 75 percent anticipated comprehension. In other words, if a student with a Lexile measure of 1000L reads a text with a Lexile measure of 1000L, the student should comprehend approximately three-quarters of the material. This 75-percent rule corresponds to the student’s instructional reading level, or the level at which the student can successfully negotiate the material with the use of context clues and other comprehension strategies to fill in the gaps.
Lexile Range: 100 below to 50 above a students’ lexile. For example, a student who has a lexile of 650 should choose books between 550 and 700. If the student attempts material about 700, the level of challenge is likely to be too great for the student to construct very much meaning from the text. Likewise, material below 550 will provide that student with little comprehension challenge.
Lexile levels begin at 200 and go above 1700. However, SRI will give students a beginning reader score (BR) if they don’t score at least a 200. For example, a student who is a beginning reader could score a BR75.
Parents can go to lexile.com and type in the name of a book and hit search. If that book is in their database (contains 1000’s of books), it will pull up the lexile level of the book.
How Does K-2 Measure Reading?
K-2 uses a test called TRC (Text Reading and Comprehension) to assess their beginning readers. This test gives student a range from >PC (below print concepts) to PC(print concepts) to RB (reading behaviors) to B through <P (greater than P).
Kindergarten Levels:
BOY(beginning of year) PC
MOY(middle of year) RB
EOY (end of year) B
First Grade Levels:
BOY(beginning of year) B
MOY(middle of year) E
EOY (end of year) I
Second Grade Levels:
BOY(beginning of year) I
MOY(middle of year) K
EOY (end of year) L
Pickett second grade also gives the SRI.
The table below reflects grade level Lexile ranges (Old & New). Apply your child’s Lexile level to the chart. You want to use the New Lexile ranges.
Here are a few examples of Lexile scores for items you are familiar with:
College Textbooks: 1215
Applications for Student Loans: 1270
W4 Forms: 1260
CD-DVD Instructions: 1080
Wall Street Journal: 1320
Where the Wild Things Are: 740
Grapes of Wrath: 680