So, What Do They Mean By Text Complexity?

"So, what do they mean by text complexity?" was a question posed to me (actually probably a few times), at a CCSS training.  I answered with what I thought was accurate information, but wondered myself.  What is meant by "text complexity?  Are we currently meeting 'their' text complexity standards in Middleton?  How do I support teachers and kids in finding these kinds of texts for lessons and choice reading?

First, I went back to the CCSS to see what they specifically had to say about the issue.  These were the major ideas I summarized:

• There is significant research to show that over the last 50 years, reading levels and complexity real world, college and career reading how increased, while the work work we ask of kids has decreased.  This has left a significant gap for most graduating seniors and is why the CCSS have put an emphasis in this area.
• The CCSS advocates kids K–5 read and "apply the reading standards" to a variety of text types including:

• Stories:  adventure stories, folktales, legends, fables, fantasy, realistic fiction, and myth Dramas: staged dialogue and brief familiar scenes
• Poetry: nursery rhymes and the subgenres of the narrative poem, limerick, and free verse poem
• Literary Nonfiction and Historical, Scientific, and Technical Texts : biographies and autobiographies; books about history, social studies, science, and the arts, directions, forms, and information displayed in graphs, charts, or maps; and digital sources on a range of topics

When it comes to instruction level text, teachers need to select texts around their social studies and science context so that kids can "generate knowledge and....study those topics or themes in depth."

Emergent readers (K-1) should read decodable texts that corralate to their reading level and word knowledge abilites. Text listed in the CCSS are there as examples for lessons to develop comprehension, content knowledge and the joy of reading.

These points make a lot of sense to me, as I'm sure they do to you as well.  But, that still doesn't get to what complexity looks like at each grade level.

Three measures help determine the complexity, as shown in what I refer to as the "Triangle of Complexity" (best said with a Monster Truck voice just for fun).  These three measures TOGETHER help us make professional decisions about which books to use for instruction (think success with assistance) and independently (in a kid's ZPD).  The three measures include:

1. Quantitative Measures - Word length, sentence length, text cohension, vocabulary, or word frequency are all thing best measured by a computer.  The most common of these tools to me are AR reading levels.  More recently we've seen Lexiles.
2. Qualitative Measures - These are qualities best measures by a human like meaning or purpose, text structure, language conventions, clarity, and how much effort the content knowledge will require.
3. Reader and Task Considerations - This is my favorite of the three because it takes into account the professional judgement of the teacher. (YES!)  This piece takes into account the qualitiative and quantiative measuere, but also the motivation and purposes of the reader.  These are the things only a teacher, working with colleagues and students, could bring to the conversation. 

These are the basics, but they weren't enough for me...yet.  So I'll be back soon, with more I've learned about the 3 measures and what'll they'll mean to our decisions and your students.

Angie