Using Lexile Measures to Differentiate Literacy Instruction

So your students won't look like this...

Source: http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PSZuOe

What is it? A Lexile measure is a way of classifying the reading ability of a student and/or the difficulty of a text. A student receives a Lexile measure on end-of-grade/course reading tests. It appears as a number followed by a capital "L." Measures range from below 200L to above 1600L. The following is a chart showing reading levels between the 25th and 75th percentile in corresponding grade levels: 

Common textbooks for each grade level tend to fall in the middle of the Lexile measures seen above. But interestingly enough, the new Common Core State Standards call for a reading level typically higher at or higher than the 75th percentile in order to be college and career ready. So what can we do for students who don't fall in the corresponding range and either need extra help or more of a challenge?

How to use it? Before assigning a text to students, check out http://www.lexile.com/. Here, you can either search through over 100,000 books that have already been assigned a Lexile measure, or you can sign up for a free account to analyze your own text. 

Analyzing your own text: When teaching Earth/Environmental Science to mostly 9th graders, I often printed news articles for class assignments and discussions. I decided to analyze a New York Times article on the volcanic eruption in Chile in 2008. The results were surprising. You can review the article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/world/americas/10chile.html?ref=volcanoes.

The following are the results from the Lexile analysis of the NY Times article:

As you can see, the level of difficulty of the article (the Lexile Measure) is beyond the range of a typical 9th grader. This is not to say that we shouldn't be challenging our students and assigning text above their level, but it may mean that we should spend more time discussing the text, analyzing the meaning, providing background information, and defining vocabulary words for our students. This tool can help us approach reading from the perspective of the student.

This analysis tool also offers us a great chance for differentiation. For my lower level readers, I would do a search for similar articles on the same volcano that are at a lower Lexile level. For example, I searched "2008 Chile volcano kids news." I cut and pasted the information into my .txt file and re-uploaded it to the analyzer. This time, it came back with a measure of 1090L. 

Getting set up to do a Lexile analysis can be slightly intimidating, but after you go through it once, you should find it super easy. To sign up and learn the steps, visit here: http://www.lexile.com/analyzer/

For your lowest level readers having difficulty with the textbook, I would suggest the search tool. You can enter in a student's Lexile Measure reading level (or estimate it) and then search for books in a certain subject area. Maybe you could find these books through your librarian or suggest them to the parents of struggling students.

Overall this could be a very helpful tool for differentiation and incorporating literacy into lessons.