Using the sample classroom text you brought to class on October 18th, follow these directions to compute the grade level equivalency of the text. It's a brief exercise that will give you tactile experience with some of the common considerations of what makes a text easy or challenging, as well as a chance for you to consider what is not taken into account. Please post your thoughts about this process of computing readability here.
I chose the Folger's Shakespeare Library edition of "Othello", an edition I prefer because of its many explanatory intertextual notes, visuals, and other paratext intended to help comprehension. Choosing three samples from Acts II and III, the readability level according to the Fry graph is approximately 9th or 10th grade reading level. This interests me because Othello is considered a "10th grade text" in MA - was the Fry reading level a part of that consideration?
ReplyDeleteHowever, reading level is not the only factor that can complicate a text. Written hundreds of years ago by a master of tricky wordplay, "Othello"'s use and faculty of language requires significant decoding even for the most gifted reader. Even if the readability level were higher - or lower - I would consider the mitigating factors of the context of Shakespeare when deciding how to present and teach it to my students.
I chooses to do my ¡Exprésate! textbook. I found this activity to be difficult with my textbook because there are not many long paragraphs and they are usually broken up. There is not much dialogue in this book. Most pages are broken up by vocabulary with pictures and instructions. So, I looked at a culture page that was in English. I found that this textbook was at a low sixth grade level. I expected this since it is an introduction text and some middle schools also teach languages. However, my ninth to eleventh graders are looking at this text. Mostly freshman are looking at it. It should be comprehensible. However, this textbook is almost a "dummy down" version of the Spanish textbooks I used in college, even at the beginners level. I wonder if it is appropriate or too simple.
ReplyDelete¡Avancemos! 1
ReplyDeleteMcDougal Littell
Repaso inclusivo
7) Decide where to study:
En la ciudad Jacó es muy pequeña no hay muchas tiendas, pero hay varias playas en el Océano Pacífico. Puedes vivir en una residencia de la escuela, con un(a) compañero(a) de cuarto.
Durante los fines de semana es muy popular hacer surf de vela o esquí acuático. También puedes nadar o tomar el sol en la playa.
Heredia es una ciudad pequeña cerca de San José, la capital. Puedes vivir en una casa con una familia con hijos. Las familias con hijos normalmente se acuestan a las diez de la noche. Se levantan a las seis y media para comer el desayuno.
En la ciu-dad Ja-có es muy pe-que-ña no hay mu-chas tien-das, pe-ro hay va-rias pla-yas en el O-cé-a-no Pa-cí-fi-co. Pue-des vi-vir en u-na re-si-den-cia de la es-cue-la, con un(a) com-pa-ñe-ro(a) de cuar-to.
<59 syllables>
Du-ran-te los fi-nes de se-ma-na es muy po-pu-lar ha-cer surf de ve-la o es-quí a-cuá-ti-co. Tam-bién pue-des na-dar o to-mar el sol en la pla-ya.
<43 syllables>
He-re-dia es u-na ciu-dad pe-que-ña cer-ca de San Jo-sé, la ca-pi-tal. Pue-des vi-vir en u-na ca-sa con u-na fa-mi-lia con hi-jos. Las fa-mi-lias con hi-jos nor-mal-men-te se a-cues-tan a las diez de la no-che. Se le-van-tan a las seis y me-dia pa-ra co-mer el de-sa-yu-no.
<80 syllables>
Is very intriguing that this book is Level 1, and the number that I got was 182 syllables in total. Is interesting that in the chart it qualifies as college reading proficiency.
Yamira, tell us more. "Interesting" meaning way off? What would you tell a teacher about the level of this book?
ReplyDeleteI used two pages from the fifth grade social studies book. On average, there are about 8 sentences per 100 words and 126 syllables per 100. If I'm using the graph correctly, this would put the book at a 4th grade/5th grade reading level. So, it might be a pretty good fit. However, the two pages are full of tier 2 and tier 3 words which makes it very hard for one of my bilingual students. For instance, the page has terms like "fir, pine, cedar, climate, migrating, elk, structures, totem poles, cedar poles, figures, carvings etc." There are very few "everyday" language words. I had to use it for the lesson; so, I read it aloud and tried to pair words with visual images on a power point and defined words as we read. Had the student read this section by herself, it would have been a struggle.
ReplyDeleteSo, while the sentence and syllable level might be on or below grade level, the actual language of the piece might be a bit too difficult without scaffolding.
Furthermore, a lot of students needed help with this reading. So, it would definitely not be an independent read without the use of a teacher, dictionary and images.
DeleteI choose to look at the Prentice Hall World History: Connections to Today - The Modern Era textbook from 1999. It is the main textbook for the class I work with, however we have not referred to the textbook much thus far. In following the guidelines for plotting the text on the Fry Graph the textbook I choose is considered to be consistent with a twelfth grade reading level averaging 6.5 sentences per 100 words and 171.5 syllables. Out of my 100+ students two have special needs and about eight are SEI and are level 4's and 5's. Taking this information into account along with the data for the graph I do believe that the textbook is appropriate for my eleventh grade classroom. However, I am hesitant to agree that the textbook is truly at the twelfth grade level.
ReplyDeleteLooking back at the data I gathered to plot on the graph I noticed that on passage had 51 one syllable words and the other had 59. What this computes to for my text is having half of the 100 word passage be "fluff" or reference words rather than vocabulary that relates to content or context. The students are not getting much historical information in the passages which is both a positive and negative. The positive being that they have less concepts to try and grasp at once, and the negative being that the concept they are trying to understand gets thinned out and becomes the "it" and "they" of the passage. Reducing the true concept into these words that are "easier" to recognize introduces a challenge for the student in following the participants. If the student can follow the participants then the text becomes easy for them, almost too easy. Since the information is so thin I find they do no think outside of it and have trouble later adding depth to their understanding of the subject.
I chose to look at the Time for Kids, edition 3-4, magazine. My cooperating teacher uses articles from the magazine to have students write open responses, this means that they practice forming a claim and supporting it with evidence from the text.
ReplyDeleteUsing the guidelines for the Fry Graph, the text I chose is consistent with the 3rd/4th grade reading level. Overall, about half of the articles are at a fourth grade reading level. Over the course of a week, the students get the chance to write open responses to the majority of the text in the magazine. Even though students get the chance to use third grade reading level texts, they still struggle with reading comprehension and need much scaffolding to understand the text. This is probably because half of the students in my classroom are at the level 4 and 5 of English language development, while two students are at the level 3. Additionally, the other half of the students in my classroom are simply struggling readers.
Much like Aleshia, I found that although the reading level of the text matched with the students' grade level, the reading material was not one that students could access independently due to the use of tier 2 and tier 3 words.
Like Mariela, I looked at the same Time for Kids Magazine for third and fourth grade. My cooperating teacher uses these articles for the same purpose in the classroom. The text I analyzed was also used as an accompanying text with a homework response question. We read the article as a class when the students wrote their open response. Students will have to revisit the same article and read it on their own when they get home.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised to find that the article I had selected was above the 3rd grade reading level according to Frye Graph. Granted, I might have miscounted the number of syllables per word but the numbers I gathered categorizes the text as a 5th or 6th grade text. Although I reread the text and it did not seem like there were too many words third graders may stumble on, the length of the text might hinder a student's ability to access this text independently during a homework response.
The text I selected to compute the reading level of gave me some kind of puzzling insights about the level of challenge students are facing in the 9th grade classroom I share with my cooperating teacher at West Roxbury Academy. Last week, we looked at an excerpt from Sandra Cisneros' "The House on Mango St. as both an example of poetic language (Chapter 15, "Darius and the Clouds" is prose that traverses the boundary between fiction and poetry) and as an exercise for finding uses of literary devices like personification and hyperbole.
ReplyDeleteIn a one-hundred word section of the book, there are 5 sentences and exactly 108 words. This leaves the work at the bottom end of a sixth grade reading level. My freshmen easily decoded the piece- we read it multiple times for multiple interpretations- but the real problems a handful of them demonstrated had to do with comprehension. I now wonder exactly why the fairly easy reading level was selected as a part of the curriculum (other than for the reason that Cisneros' book's content is so great- always a reason!) Luckily, we are scaffolding students up through analysis of short stories and into Shakespeare and "A Raisin in the sun," so I have no doubts about future student challenge. Perhaps, "Darius and the Clouds" worked to free up our lower-level readers' working memory to process the more difficult figurative language and the less than linear structuring of images in the chapter? In any case, I'll have to keep checking in with this handful of students to find if the definitions we gave for literary terms and the way of deconstructing language we taught is working for them.
The text that I decided to calculate the readability of was a text for the read-aloud. This text does not have to be on grade level but should be only a grade or two below but more importantly must be related to a unit that we are covering in writing and/or reading. This specific text, A Days Work, by Eve Burning, altered my original hypothesis about its readability level.
ReplyDeleteI estimated that the level of readability would be grade 2 or 3 but once calculating the readability, it was confirmed that it was a grade 1 level book. Although the grades are not far from each other, the students ability in my class range from grade 2 to grade 6. Only students who were on level or above were able to take the book, make inferences, ask questions and determine the life lesson that was taught, as all memoirs have a life lesson to teach. The readability, although calculated as grade 1 is that way due to the large number of sentences and one syllable words. This calculation does not take into account the meaning of the words, which also needs to be focus, or examined.