One of the shifts that moving to the Common Core standards will require is asking students to have rich and rigorous conversations that are based on a common text that they have been reading. What does it mean to ask students to give a text-based answer? Let’s explore that concept and what it means to ask students to give a text-based answer to what they have been reading. According to the research of Pearson and Johnson (1978) the answer to some questions is textually explicit meaning that that answer is found directly in the text and can be pointed out by the responder.  Questions of this type are like: What color was the wagon in the story?”  Teachers have been asking these types of “right there” questions for generations.

The next level of questioning is textually implicit or questions where the answer is not directly stated but must be implied from the text.  These types of responses have been referred to as “making the connection” or “putting it together” questions.  To respond to this type of question, the reader has to think about what the author has said and perhaps consider information that has been presented in multiple places in the text. An example of a question that fits this category might be:  Why was the stroke of midnight a problem for Cinderella?  In this example, the student must put information together from several places to determine a response. The teacher could then ask the student to cite specific bits of information from the text to support his or her response by asking the student, “What it the text helps you understand this?  Read to us the specific areas of the text (page and paragraph) that helped you come to this conclusion.”   Just and Carpenter (1987) state, “questions that require higher level abstraction (such as the application of a principle) product more learning than factual questions. High-level questions probably encourage deeper processing and more thorough organization” (pp. 421-422).

So, the next time you are creating questions for your students based on their reading – and this strategy works not only for Literature but also for content-based reading, develop some questions that require students to “put the pieces together” and then justify their analysis.  Get students in the habit of providing support for their analysis and allow others to challenge faulty connections and/or assumptions when they are made.  Your class will have much more exciting discussions and thinking will be higher and more productive.

This post is the final post in a series of three about determining text complexity for matching text to readers. In this short article, we will discuss the final factor in matching text to readers which is the Reader and the Task. These are factors such as how motivated is the student to read the text and what is their knowledge and experience in this topic?  I have seen many a student struggle through a book far above his or her reading level when the motivation to learn more information on a specific topic was high. Another factor to consider is what is the purpose for reading the text?  Why is the reader going to read it?  Will s/he be synthesizing the text to prepare for a debate?  Will s/he need to understand the information and be able to teach it to someone else?  Will the student have to compare and contrast various points of view?  If the student is simply asked to “Read the chapter and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.” it can hardly be a surprise when students have little motivation or interest in so doing.  In fact, research has shown that students who understand the syntax of the English language can find the answer to literal questions without even completely reading the text at all.  Finally, we must ask does the reader have the cognitive skill, language skill and will there be any engagement that will hold the reader to the text long enough for him or her to read the entire text.  In other words, how will we use the text so that we can stimulate interest, help motivate readers to stick with the text and cause them to reflect at higher levels as a result of reading the text? Teachers must consider all three elements (quantitative, qualitative and reader and task) when selecting an appropriate text to match students with appropriate text.

In the last post, I discussed the quantitative measures of text complexity that a teacher will need to understand for meeting Common Core expectations. In this post, I will continue by exploring the second consideration which are the qualitative measures of matching reader to text. One factor to be considered when analyzing the qualitative factors is the richness of the plot and the levels of meaning found in the text. For example, while Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels can be written and even read at a simplistic level as a story about the travels of a guy who visited the land of Lilliput,  the text as it was written by Swift, is considered complex because of the parody and satire that it contains. A teacher would also want to consider the text’s structure, organization and levels of purpose. The language conventionality and clarity for the reader is another factor to be considered. A text which contained a large amount of unfamiliar dialect would be more complex than one written in the dialect with which the reader is familiar. Finally, the last thing to consider when determining out whether a text will be a good match for the reader is to consider the sophistication of the vocabulary, what prior knowledge the reader must bring to the text and the cultural understandings that the text will require. The more limited the reader’s background knowledge and cultural understanding of the text content, the more complex the text should be rated. In general, texts that are written in a literal, contemporary style are easier to read than ones containing an abundant presence of figurative, ironic, ambiguous, old fashioned or unfamiliar dialect or highly specialized text. For example, unless you worked in the mortgage industry or were trained in this specialized area, you probably found it difficult to understand the 2 inch high stack of mortgage documents place before you when you bought a home. Although the words in isolation are known to you, the way they are used and coupled with industry jargon, is not. Therefore, this text would have been highly complex for you as a reader. Rubrics for analyzing literary and informational text will help you determine what texts might contain higher levels of complexity and which might be “just right” to stretch your students but not overwhelm them. In the final post in this series, I will discuss the Reader and the Task and how a teacher needs to consider these elements in his or her analysis of text appropriateness and complexity.

The new Common Core standards have called for using text with increased complexity. In this short post, we will look at the various elements that help determine how complex a text is judged to be. First there are the quantitative measures such as looking at the text length and cohesion, the sentence and word length, the vocabulary difficulty and how often difficult words appear in the text.  The word frequency, called “semantic difficulty,” coupled with the sentence length, called “syntactic complexity” are the two factors that can predict how difficult a text will be to understand.  There are formulas that use these key textual features to determine how difficult the passage is to read or the passage “readability.”  In decades past, teachers have used such quantitative measures as the Fry or Chall Readability scales to match text to student.While there are several elements that make up text complexity, in this post, I will discuss the quantitative  measures that should be considered to judge text complexity. In future posts, I will continue this discussion to explain the other elements that should be used to determine the text complexity of a passage.

Currently, most reading teachers are using the Lexile text analysis tool  ( http://www.lexile.com) to match readers and text. Typically, students would be expected to read in the following lexile ranges: K-1: 100-500 Lexile range; 2-3: 450-790 Lexile range; 4-5: 770-980 Lexile range; 6-8: 955-1155 Lexile range; 9-10: 1080-1305 Lexile Range and grade 11-12: 1215-1355 Lexile range. To find the Lexile measure for a specific book, you can use the “Look up a Book” feature on the Lexile website. You can also find lists of books that are considered good matches for students in your grade level here too. For shorter text passages up to 1000 words in length, you can also use the free tool called the Professional Lexile Analyzer. When you cut and paste your text into the Analyzer window, the program will return the Lexile value for this text passage. This is just the first element that will need to be considered when matching text to the readers in your class. I will be discussing the other three measures in upcoming posts so be sure to check back frequently for more information on this topic.

As I listen to presentations on the new Common Core standards being rolled out all across the nation, it strikes me how important it is for all teachers to be strong teachers of reading and writing no matter what discipline they teach. No longer can teachers  leave “teaching reading and writing” to the English or Language Arts teacher. Instead, each discipline will need to identify the texts (literary, expository/informational, functional) and writing types that belong to that subject area and be responsible for weaving those understandings and experiences into their own curriculum.   Students can no longer be taught to seek the “right” answer but instead will have to become deep thinkers and processors of knowledge. Asking students to read at higher levels and for more sustained periods of time has never been more important that it will be in meeting the new standards and preparing students for their future employment requirements. For years, teachers have complained that American Standards are a “mile wide and an inch deep.”  For the first time, American students will be expected to learn less (as in standard numbers) but to deeper and more profound levels. Teaching to deep levels of understanding and performance will be required for all students – not just the “gifted” or “Honors” level students. Unfortunately, I fear that too many teachers have not even begun to understand the massive change that will be taking place in our country as this unfolds in classrooms from coast to coast. Although many will be dragged” kicking and screaming” into this era,  the wisest and most competent among our ranks will embrace the change and quietly continue doing what they have been doing – setting the bar high and immersing their students in print of all types. Here’s too you – those of you who have led the charge and demanded so much of your students – your day will finally be coming.