The subject of reading levels has become a hot topic these days, just like the Common Core Standards.
The use of reading levels has a lot of supporters; but also has a lot of, well….”non-supporters”.
For those who support the use of reading levels, we may like that there are clear-cut guidelines and levels we can follow. This no doubt makes it easier to teach reading, at least for the majority of students.
Those who don’t like reading levels point out that we can’t reduce an individual’s ability to read and process information to a single number.
Many questions have come up about the methods used to determine what level a text is, as well as the assessments used to determine when an individual is successful at that reading level.
This debate is particularly relevant to the discussion of language development, because the language in a text is a primary factor that determines how difficult it is to read.
And of course, your current reading level would be directly related to your ability to use that language.
The language in texts can actually contribute to further language growth; so it’s important for us to understand how it changes from Kindergarten through 12th grade.
Yet if we’re going to dive in to a discussion about text language, we’ll want to understand both sides of the reading level debate.
That’s why today, I’m going to talk about a couple “myths” on each side of the argument. I call them “myths” because with any complicated issue that has opposing viewpoints, the truth is often in the middle of extremes.
Myth 1: Reading levels are always the best indicator of a students’ reading abilities
The goal of putting students at designated levels is to give a snapshot of their ability so we know what texts are appropriate for them.
We’d do that by giving them assessments to determine their success with different texts.
For example, this article here by Reading A-Z explains how they use a students’ ability to accurately retell and answer comprehension questions to determine reading levels.
But the problem here is that answering and retelling may only give us part of the story.
In 2017, Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools published an issue called “Reading Comprehension is not a Single Ability”,
This entire issue included articles written with the aim of describing the factors impacting reading comprehension; including underlying language abilities.
For example, in this article here, Catts and Kahmi (2017) make the statement that we can’t reduce reading comprehension to one single ability.
One could take this statement a step further and draw the conclusion that if reading comprehension isn’t a single ability; it can’t be represented by a single score or level either. This would discount the value of reading levels.
Then, in this article Wixon (2017) states that using measures such as open-ended questions, multiple choice questions, or true-false questions can be impacted by factors such as motivation, background knowledge, passage familiarity, or nature of the task.
If the measures used to assess reading level don’t take these student and situational factors in to account, they may not be completely accurate.
Because we have reason to question the validity of some methods used to assess reading levels, using them as the sole indicator of a students’ performance can be problematic.
Now, let’s get to the next myth, which is exactly the opposite of the first one.
Myth #2: Reading levels are always bad and we should get rid of them.
I hesitate to believe any type of absolutist “all-or-nothing” statement…about anything. There are few things that are all good and all bad all the time in all situations.
But while we can’t overemphasize the importance of a single measure, we can’t throw it out completely either.
We need standards and ways to assess them, and reading levels are one piece of information can indicate how a student is doing compared to other students.
In my experience many students who have a low reading level tend to be the ones struggle overall academically.
This is likely because some of the measures used in determining reading level, such as oral reading fluency and accuracy, can accurately predict which students are likely to struggle on other diagnostic measures of reading (Speece & Ritchey, 2005; Wise et al., 2010).
As Wixon (2017) points out, screening procedures are just a means of flagging students who need more in depth procedures.
It’s possible then that we could use reading levels as one method of identifying students in need of further attention.
And while we need to continue to improve the accuracy of all of these measures, we can’t throw them out completely either. We need some way to efficiently find the students who are struggling.
Reading levels (and the screening procedures used to get them) are still useful tools if we see them as just ONE piece of information, and not the entire picture.
Now, the next question.
How do the “experts” determine text level and what’s appropriate for each grade?
Well, it’s complicated.
But it involves a lot of analysis; often using software to analyze everything. Here’s some information about how it’s often done (Hiebert, & Pearson, 2010).
There’s also this explanation here about how text complexity ties in to Common Core Standards (Hiebert, 2012).
Usually things like sentence length, difficulty of vocabulary, complexity of sentence structure, use of cohesive devices, and the topic are taken in to consideration.
But since this process may make things even more difficult and complicated, I’m going to give you a breakdown and overview of what types of language is seen in texts across the grade levels.
I’ll tell you about in the next article, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, to learn how to build one of the most impactful language skills that develops across the school-age years, download this free guide for SLPs.
This free guide is called The Ultimate Guide to Sentence Structure.
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References
Hiebert, E. H. (December, 2012). Readability and the common core’s staircase of text complexity. Retrieved from: http://textproject.org/assets/text-matters/Text-Matters_Readability-and-Complexity.pdf
Reading A to Z. (2017, December). Assessing a student’s level. Retrieved from: https://www.readinga-z.com/learninga-z-levels/assessing-a-students-level/
Speece, D. L., & Ritchey, K. D. (2005). A longitudinal study of the development of oral reading fluency in young children at risk for reading failure. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 38, 387–399. doi:10.1177/00222194050380050201
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