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What's New
Matching Readers to Texts: The Lexile Framework
Our Proseminar given by Dr. Marcia Invernizzi
and subsequent follow-up meetings have lead to fruitful discussions
on the topic of matching readers and texts for successful instruction
and independent practice. While many of us are very familiar
with leveling schemata connected to the Developmental Reading Assessment
(DRA) and Reading Recovery (RR), this What's New segment introduces
another leveling system to draw upon in implementing this important
instructional component.
The Lexile Framework for
matching readers and texts uses a numeric formula to compute a measure
of text difficulty (a lexeme). The Lexile Framework for rating texts
and readers "links texts and readers under a common metric without
subjective evaluation." Lexile ratings can help teachers and parents
make text selections with a good idea of how successful a reader's comprehension
of that text will be. The Lexile system was developed under the auspices
of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and
has been marketed since 1996 by MetaMetrics.(Research
Foundations of the Lexile Framework)
One of the key features of the Lexile
website is its searchable databases of titles (English and Spanish)
that have been assigned Lexile ratings. Searching
the database is free to the public (you will be asked to register),
but you are required to be a "licensed user" to analyze titles
not in the databases. The collection of previously-rated titles is extensive
(over 25,000 book titles), and some publishers, such as Scholastic,
are providing lexile ratings for their books.
There is a special page just for teachers
that discusses classroom use of this rating system and a special page
for parents.
Feedback
on this What's New page
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