Even though grade leveling has been widely used, it has a number of problems that make it hard to match children with reading material reliably: Grade levels are derived by looking at the average scores for each grade level which will be different based on the assessment used. Don’t use a scale with regular units of measurement Different reading tests use different methods to determine grade levels. Why Not Grade Levels?

The grade level on a reading test may have very little connection to the grade level printed in the spine of a book. Need an ability level of child and difficulty level of text A child’s reading level has very little to do with his grade in school Grade levels for books on the other hand, are derived by applying readability formulas to text

A unit that measures the students ability to “attack” the difficulty of a text (difficulty of vocabulary and complexity of sentences) Lexiles can range from below 0 to above 2000 The appropriate range of reading levels for a student is between 50L above and 100L below the reader’s lexile measure A reader’s lexile range is the difficulty level in which the reader can easily comprehend about 75% of the passage of text On MAP, Lexile ranges are reported on Teacher & Student Reports as the student’s RIT to Reading Range What is a Lexile?

Think about it this way…

460 lexile level 300 lexile level 600 lexile level