Directions. In this assignment, you will assess the complexity of a text of your choosing, taken from the grade 7-8, 9-10, or 11-12 strand of the CCSS Informational texts. You?ll use the five steps below for your assessment. Write it as a report. Consider colleagues in your field and/or school as your audience. Imagine that you are trying to teach them about what ?complexity? means in the context of teaching.
? Begin the report by providing full bibliographic information for the text that you have chosen.
? Use the headings and subheading from the table below to organize your report. For the quantitative sections,
o please report the results in the format I?ve outlined (You can just copy and paste it.). This makes it easier for me to read.
o Please include the analyzed passages at the end of the report, as appendices.
? In the Qualitative sections you?ll need to explain each of your analyses. Be brief, offer some evidence using illustrations from your text, and outline your reasoning, using our readings and the characteristics from the PowerPoint discussion as criteria, where appropriate;
? The final section asks you to draw conclusions from the data you have gathered about
o The sources of complexity in this text;
o The comparability and reliability of the different indices;
o The meaning of ?complexity? itself.
You must familiarize yourself with the entire text, though some parts of the assessment requires you to focus in on a particular chapter. Remember, too, that you may well find some disparities in the ?data? you collect, especially in the qualitative dimensions. Don?t ignore those differences; consider, instead, possible implications for your understanding of what ?complexity? in a text actually means.
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The Text Complexity Multi-Index Process
Directions. In this assignment, you will assess the complexity of a text of your choosing, taken from the grade 7-8, 9-10, or 11-12 strand of the CCSS Informational texts. You’ll use the five steps below for your assessment. Write it as a report. Consider colleagues in your field and/or school as your audience. Imagine that you are trying to teach them about what “complexity” means in the context of teaching.
• Begin the report by providing full bibliographic information for the text that you have chosen.
• Use the headings and subheading from the table below to organize your report. For the quantitative sections,
o please report the results in the format I’ve outlined (You can just copy and paste it.). This makes it easier for me to read.
o Please include the analyzed passages at the end of the report, as appendices.
• In the Qualitative sections you’ll need to explain each of your analyses. Be brief, offer some evidence using illustrations from your text, and outline your reasoning, using our readings and the characteristics from the PowerPoint discussion as criteria, where appropriate;
• The final section asks you to draw conclusions from the data you have gathered about
o The sources of complexity in this text;
o The comparability and reliability of the different indices;
o The meaning of “complexity” itself.
You must familiarize yourself with the entire text, though some parts of the assessment requires you to focus in on a particular chapter. Remember, too, that you may well find some disparities in the “data” you collect, especially in the qualitative dimensions. Don’t ignore those differences; consider, instead, possible implications for your understanding of what “complexity” in a text actually means.
You may complete this assignment individually or together with a partner. The partner may be someone in your certification area or in another area, as long as you agree on the text to assess. If you complete the assignment with a partner, choose one of you to upload the assignment, so that I don’t have duplicates. Also, be sure that both names appear at the top of the paper.
Section/Sub-section
Qualitative Benchmarks (from Dale-Chall)
I have added Benchmark texts from a variety of disciplines into the Week 2 readings. Using these and the discussion in Hiebert’s Multi-Index, “level” your book (not just the passages) by comparing it to the samples in the field/content area closest to your own. Include a 1-paragraph explanation, with examples of the features or qualities that influenced your judgment.
Qualitative Dimensions
Appendix A from the Common Core State Standards describe the qualitative elements relevant to each of the subcategories listed to the left and below here. The Beginner’s Guide to Text Complexity explains the process for assessing the level of complexity of each element. To assess the complexity of your text along each of the following dimensions , use either the Informational text or the Literary text rubric (In our assignment folder)as appropriate.
Layout
Levels of meaning/ purpose
Structure
Language conventions
and clarity
Background Knowledge Demands
A. General &Cultura
B. Domain or Discipline-specific l
Quantitative Indices
Fry Readability: Compute this using the instructions in “Beginner’s Guide to Text Complexity,” pp 13-14. You need only use the Fry
1. Passage 1
a. # of sentences/100 words (including partial sentence)
b. # of syllables/100 words
c. Fry readability grade level:
2. Passage 2
a. # of sentences/100 words (including partial sentence)
b. # of syllables/100 words
c. Fry readability grade level:
3. Passage 3
a. # of sentences/100 words (including partial sentence)
b. # of syllables/100 words
c. Fry readability grade level:
4. Overall Score (avg of the 3)
a. Avg. # of sentences/100 words (including partial sentence)
b. Avg. # of syllables/100 words
c. Overall Fry readability score:
Lexile Scores Go to www.lexile.com . You must register, but it is “free.” Lexile claims to have all the Common Core Exemplars in its database, with at least the overall “Lexile Score.” So, look for yours and copy down whatever Lexile and other complexity data it contains.
In addition, you’ll need to convert at least 3 passages of about 250 words into a “plain text” format. The site explains how to do that.
1. Choose a particular chapter from the book, a chapter that you find relatively stimulating, that contains the central or most significant ideas in the book.
2. In that chapter, choose three passages:
a. one that appears to be relatively “easy,”
b. one that seems to be typical, or relatively average in complexity;
c. one that represents a passage that you judge to be especially complex.
3. Enter each passage separately for analysis. To do that, type each passage into a Word document. Save the document as a “.txt” file (so that it is unformatted). Then, one by one, copy and paste each passage into the analyzer.
4. For each passage, you’ll get 4 scores, listed below. For each passage, copy the score Given:
a. Lexile Measure
b. Mean Sentence Length
c. Mean Log Word Frequency
d. Word Count
5. For each passage, write the Grade Level represented by the Lexile Measure “a” above). The chart at the end of these instructions converts Lexile Scores to Grade levels. Include that too. Sometimes, a Lexile score will place the passage or text in the “stretch” band for a grade level. Use that as the grade level.
Conclusions On the basis of your analysis, draw conclusions about
• The Lexile Band (see below) to which you would assign this text
• Any differences that you identified, especially in the quantitative measures used.
o Were the Fry passages comparable to each other in their measured difficulty? If not, how much did that difference affect the overall Fry score?
o Were the Lexile passages comparable to each other? To the overall Lexile score for the 3 passages? To the Lexile score for the whole book? Why or why not?
o Which vocabulary terms might have affected the MLWF scores?
o Did the overall Fry score and the Overall Lexile score result in the same “grade level” placement for the text? Why or why not?
• The quantitative and qualitative sources of complexity in the text. Which elements that you have analyzed are the central sources of whatever complexity you have identified? That is, which elements will adolescent readers of the sorts described in our case study class find the most challenging?
• The reliability of the Lexile Scoring as the basis for categorizing this text. Would you conclude that this text is more or less complex than the grade band given by Common Core? How and why is this so? Does Lexile/Common Core overemphasize or underemphasize some elements? Are there elements of complexity that they fail to include at all? What are they?
• Consider what you might need to do to make this text useful across the various reading levels, levels of language proficiency, differently abled students, and across racial ethnic, and gender differences for adolescents as described in our case study class.
Lexile “Band” Ranges
Grade
Band Current
Lexile Band “Stretch”
Lexile Band*
K–1 N/A N/A
2–3 450L–725L 420L–820L
4–5 645L–845L 740L–1010L
6–8 860L–1010L 925L–1185L
9-10 960L–1115L 1050L–1335L
11–CCR 1070L–1220L 1185L–1385L
