1. Tackling Literacy Goals The Mission of Arthur Williams Middle School is to prepare fully every student for high school and beyond.

2. Coin Toss ▪ Football games start with a coin toss. A 50/50 chance of choosing how you start the game. ▪ Making the decision to read material suitable to your ability level is a 100% chance of increasing your literacy. ▪ Why even bother flipping a coin?

3. Possible Outcomes ▪ Receive – Receive the information you need to help boost your child’s literacy. ▪ Kick – Kick-start your family’s reading habits into overdrive with a family reading night. ▪ Defer – Why wait until it’s too late? Make a change now so that you can be successful later!

4. Enhancing Your Playbook By coming here tonight, we hope to improve your parenting playbook!

5. What is a Lexile measure? ▪ A Lexile Measure is a term used to describe the reading difficulty of a text and a reader’s ability to comprehend a text. ▪ This means: – every reader has an individual Lexile Measure – every text has its own Lexile Measure ▪ When you read a text that matches your reading level, you understand it better than reading the same information written at a more complicated Lexile Measure. The goal should be to comprehend 75% of the text.

6. Lexile does not… ▪ measure the content of the text ▪ measure the quality of a book ▪ measure the age-appropriateness of the reading material – meaning just because a 4 th grader can read Hunger Games doesn’t mean he or she has the maturity to read it

7. What is the goal of using a Lexile measure? The goal of using Lexile measures to help readers find books and articles at an appropriate level of difficulty and determine how well that reader will likely understand or comprehend the material.

8. Why am I just hearing about them now? ▪ Lexile measurements have begun a gradual replacement of the ATOS book level scale created by Accelerated Reader. ▪ Lexile measurements are being used as the reading measurement on the new GA Milestone’s test.

9. Why do Lexile measurements matter? ▪ Lexiles are the new standard for determining which texts a reader can handle. ▪ Schools, including ours, are now measured based on the percentage of their students reading “on grade level.” ▪ To prepare our students for life outside of school, which includes the ability to read important tax documents, medical forms, etc. and college level reading

10. Real World Reading Demands Are we preparing our students for their futures? 11th-12th grade textbooks: 1090L GED Test Material: 1060L Military Training & Field Manuals: 1180L Citizenship (Voting, Newspapers, Jury Duty): 1230L Postsecondary Textbooks (1st 2 years): 1355L Entry-level Occupational Reading for Law & Public Safety: 1420-1740L Entry-level Occupational Reading for Retail: 1180- 1270L iPhone Instructions: 1080L Installing Your Child Safety Seat: 1170L Federal Tax Form W-4: 1260L Application for Student Loan: 1270L Aetna Health Care Discount Form: 1360L

11. What is a Lexile range? Lexile Grade Bands ▪ Grade level bands have been created to show the Lexile level expected by students within a certain grade range. ▪ The grade band 6-8 has an expected Lexile range of 925L-1185L. Lexile Reading Ranges ▪ Based on students’ STAR reading Lexile measurement, a Lexile range is created for every student. ▪ To determine that range, the score from the STAR test has 100 points subtracted (for the low end) and 50 points added (for the high end). VS.

12. An important note Lexiles are not the only way to choose reading material, but it is an excellent starting point for challenging students to become better readers. There is a difference between selecting classroom materials and individual reading outside of class. Student interest in the book, desire to learn a topic, and motivation should also be considered for independent reading.

13. HOME CONNECT CLICK HERE

14. Book Scanner App With BookScanner App, you can quickly and easily scan the barcode off the back of the book to find out all the critical information you need to know. Your scanned books will save to a history list for easy reference later on. BookScanner will find the quiz number, ATOS (also ZPD) level, points, word count, and interest level. Your history can be referenced from within the app, or you can now email and print the book list as well.