How do I identify the reading levels of the students I teach? This is a question that remains at the fore of my mind as I begin the school year. I pose this question thinking about how in previous years in my role as a classroom teacher I would often hear my colleagues discuss their concerns about students reading below grade level and wondering what that meant. To clarify, I wanted to understand how they determined when a student was or was not reading at grade level to inform my knowledge and work with students because I found determining students reading levels a somewhat subjective and confusing practice.
At that time, I did understand that if a student had yet to consolidate the foundational reading skills needed to decode and comprehend texts when they were beyond the primary grades, they were likely to be reading below grade level. Yet I wondered once a student had acquired those foundational reading skills, how did I and other educators determine their reading level.
Also, while I understand that science-based reading assessments such as a MAZE (a reading comprehension assessment), a vocabulary screener, and an oral reading fluency test (ORF) are valid and reliable reading assessments that provide insight to students reading competencies particularly when they are beyond the primary grades, I think screeners are only one important but initial step in gaining insight to students reading abilities and reading levels.
Specific expectation C1.1, Using Foundational Knowledge and Skills to Comprehend Texts, calls educators to leverage the foundational language skills identified in Strand B to support students in practicing and further developing their reading comprehension skills. The skills and knowledge that students should use to read and comprehend texts listed in specific expectation C1.1 include using knowledge of words, grammar, cohesive ties, sentence structure, and background knowledge to read texts of various levels of complexity depending on the grade level. In fact, the only difference between the grade level expectations in specific expectation C1.1 is the complexity of texts that educators should use with students.
Therefore, because students need to read texts of various levels of complexity as they progress through the elementary grades and their ability to read increasingly complex texts to a certain degree informs their reading level, I think I need to better understand some scientific measures of text complexity so I can better select texts that align with students reading level and further support their reading development.
To better understand the relationship between text complexity and students reading levels, I read the first chapter in the book, Text Complexity: Stretching Readers with Texts and Tasks (2020), by Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane Loop. From reading the first chapter, I learned that when thinking about text complexity I should consider three overall facets that include:
- The qualitative measures of the text. This includes the levels of meaning, clarity, structures of language, and knowledge demands placed on the reader.
- The quantitative measures of the text. This includes sentence length, syntax, and vocabulary.
- The reader and task. This includes the qualities of the reader utilizing the text, meaning their cognitive capabilities, motivation for reading, background knowledge, and what the reader is tasked to do with the text.
Beyond learning about the three overall facets of text complexity, two additional ideas continue to resonate with me and will inform my practice going forward. The first idea was contained in the comments regarding the relationship between the reader and the task. Meaning, identifying and understanding the purpose for reading is a critical component of text selection. This further translate to mean, when I select a text to use with students, both they and I must understand my purpose for selecting the text and what I want students to gain from engaging with it.
For example, is my goal to support students in further practicing or developing certain reading skills or strategies? Do they need to build background knowledge or further develop their knowledge in general on a certain topic? Is my intention to promote a joy of reading by sharing an engaging story or help them recognize the value of reading by sharing what I believe to be vital information or is my purpose a combination of these items? The first insight I gained from reading this chapter is that I need to be more intentional and transparent with myself and students regarding the texts I use to teach and what I want them to gain from engaging with them.
The second idea that continues to resonate with me is that when students are motivated to read, they can far exceed educator expectations of what they should be capable of reading; and instructional practices can contribute to or detract from a student’s motivation to read. In the chapter the authors cite research that identifies five teaching practices that foster motivation and five that destroy it. The five instructional practices that positively impact reading motivation include:
- Relevance
- Choice
- Success
- Collaboration
- Thematic units
While the five instructional practices that demotivate students to read include:
- Nonrelevance
- Excessive teacher control
- Difficult lessons
- Frequent individual work
- Disconnected units
Providing the right amount of motivation while remaining mindful of the practices that can demotivate students to read is another insight that I gained from reading the chapter.
I still think that determining students reading levels is a somewhat subjective and confusing practices but from learning about the three facets that determine a texts level of complexity, the reader and task being one of them, I’m now less focused on determining students reading levels and more on determining their reading abilities then using texts that support them in becoming more confident competent critical readers of various texts.
